The campaign to assess public library outcomes got a tremendous boost by Library Journal’s Director Summit held last month in Columbus, Ohio. It’s heartening to see library leaders getting serious about making outcome assessment integral to the management of U.S. public libraries! The excitement and determination are necessary for making progress on this front. And [...]
Archive for the ‘Advocacy’ Category
The Path of Most Resistance
Posted in Advocacy, Outcome assessment, Reporting Evaluation/Assessment Results on January 31, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
The U Word
Posted in Advocacy, Measurement, Reporting Evaluation/Assessment Results, Research, Statistics on April 9, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
This week Chase Bank sent an email to its customers saying that one of their vendor’s computer systems were hacked. The bank stated that they: …are confident that the information that was retrieved [i.e., stolen] included some Chase customer e-mail addresses, but did not include any customer account or financial information. Based on everything we [...]
Stubborn Facts
Posted in Advocacy, Reporting Evaluation/Assessment Results, Research on March 12, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
In the book John Adams author David McCullough writes about Adams’ legal defense of British soldiers on trial for murder in 1770. In his argument to the Massachusettes jury Adams said: Facts are stubborn things. And whatever our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictums of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and [...]
Non-Exponential Potential
Posted in Advocacy, Measurement, Reporting Evaluation/Assessment Results on February 15, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
A new OCLC membership report, Perceptions of Libraries, 2010: Context and Community, is hot off the…er…PDF-Maker! The report is formatted more like a magazine than a study, with key findings summarized in a myriad of graphical illustrations. So, I must confess that I have rather neglected the narrative so far. But from browsing mostly through [...]
Discussing Accuracy
Posted in Advocacy, Library assessment, Measurement, Research, Statistics on January 11, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Now that I am no longer distracted by the subject of last week’s entry I can get to the intended topic for my first 2011 blog entry. I should say, though, that I won’t be turning over any kind of new leaf for the new year. For now I’m sticking with the theme I’ve dwelt [...]
Experience Keeps a Dear School
Posted in Advocacy, Research, Statistics on September 29, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Last June the final report from an IMLS-funded study of public library summer reading programs, The Dominican Study: Public Library Summer Programs Close the Reading Gap, was published. The “reading gap” refers to the cumulative loss in proficiency that has been observed in students who struggle with reading. The gap is cumulative because the “summer [...]
I Geek Information Accuracy
Posted in Advocacy, Statistics on July 14, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
The second phase of OCLC’s national library advocacy project debuted last year as the “GeekTheLibrary” campaign. The campaign is cool, chic, hip, flashy, geeky, and so on. Pretty ambitious to try to coin new slang! For sure I’m not a good judge of communication campaigns, but I wish them success on this one. When it [...]
Sugar High
Posted in Advocacy on June 8, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
It’s very simple. Government agencies that issue distorted information in a time of crisis lose credibility and end up appearing incompetent. Even federal bureaucracies eventually learn this. Take the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster for example. Last week CBS News reported that the U.S. Department of the Interior misrepresented findings from the independent scientific assessments [...]
Navigating with Fragmentary Information
Posted in Research, Measurement, Advocacy, Library assessment, tagged generalizability of findings, sampling, anecdotal data, convenience sample, statistical charts on February 16, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
I have implied this in other entries in this blog, but I might as well say it outright: The library and information science profession needs to come to terms with the issue of standards for (i.e., rules of) evidence for performance, statistical, and advocacy research data. There, now I’ve said it. I recently read the [...]
Sawing with a Dull Saw
Posted in Advocacy, Library assessment, Measurement, Statistics, tagged history of public libraries, performance measurement, public library statistics on January 25, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
In spite of their evolution over the last few decades, accelerated most recently due to the Googlization of information, public libraries have been amazingly impervious to change in the arena of performance measurement. I found the following observations about library measures in the early history of American libraries: There is no branch of library economy [...]
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IMLS- Blog Post: National Medal Video: San José Public Library May 29, 2012
- Blog Post: Mark Your Calendars for WebWise Reprise! Live Webinars Coming in June May 25, 2012
- Blog Post: National Medal Video: Madison Children’s Museum May 22, 2012
- Blog Post: Let’s Move Museums & Gardens Success Story: Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History May 18, 2012
- Blog Post: Summer Learning is Important to Student Success May 16, 2012
- New Report Explores Roles of Libraries and Museums in an Era of Participatory Culture May 16, 2012
