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 comes to data, though, these advocacy campaigns can be clueless. They really need to kick it up a notch, clean up their acts, circle back, and cut out the BS (bogus stuff). 
Which is to say they need to think more critically about the claims they make.* The results will be worth the effort. As it is, the GeekTheLibrary site repeats the same ol’ same ol’ I’ve talked about already. Is it really so painful to just tell it like it is? Like, tell the whole data story in a balanced and, like, intelligent way?
Anyway, let’s take a look at some “facts” GeekTheLibrary has posted. The first fact is: [Read more....]
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 short and enjoyable book Graphic Discovery: A Trout in the Milk and Other Visual Adventures by statistician Howard Wainer (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005). The subtitle of the book comes from something Henry David Thoreau wrote. During a dairy strike in 1850 in New England people began to suspect that dairy owners were watering down the milk supply. This led Thoreau to write in his journal, “Sometimes circumstantial evidence can be quite convincing; like when you find a trout in the milk” (quoted in Wainer, p. 81).
Wainer’s main point, one certainly made also by others like William Cleveland and Edward Tufte, is that well designed graphical representations are invaluable for exploring and understanding data. Graphical representation of data can lead to revelations about data and the underlying phenomena they describe that would otherwise be missed. [Read more...]
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 more important, or so little understood by a librarian as helps to himself, as the daily statistics which he can preserve of the growth, loss, and use (both in extent and character) of the collection under his care. The librarian who watches these things closely, and records them, always understands what he is about, and what he accomplishes or fails to accomplish. The patrons to whom he present these statistics will comprehend better the machinery of the library, and be more indulgent toward its defects. Public Libraries in the United States of America, Warren, S.R. And Clark, S. N., Eds., Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of Education, 1876, p. 714.
Interesting that use of library statistics for advocacy purposes was recognized in 1876. [Read more...]
Readers of the, say, older persuasion may recall a time when children actually enjoyed games that required no peripheral devices, infrared sensors, or satellite tracking. There was one party game, simply called (I think) “Telephone,” where one player whispered a message to the next, and that player to the next, until the message was passed all the way around the circle of players. The fun came when everyone heard the amusing distortions that ended up in the final message.
In library advocacy research, though, message distortion is not amusing. I noticed a serious instance of this in a recent IMLS Research Brief which cites an American Library Association (ALA) report finding that patron use of library computers for job-seeking purposes has “greatly increased.” [Read more...]
In 2008 the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) published a marketing research report addressing the need for increasing public support for libraries. The study, From Awareness to Funding: A Study of Library Support in America, was funded by a $1.2 million grant awarded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Respondents in the study were divided into four groups according to how supportive of public library funding they were. Somehow—the OCLC researchers don’t say how—certain questionnaire responses qualified respondents for assignment to each group. 
But the results don’t always make sense. For instance, 20% of “super-supporter” group said they were not definitely committed to voting in favor of libraries. And 6% of this group was either unsure how they’d vote or said they would vote “No.” Wondering how such uncommitted respondents ended up assigned to the group that is “super” supportive of libraries, I contacted the OCLC researchers. Unfortunately, I never did get a response to this question. [Read more...]
It is fairly well known that the field of business management can be susceptible to fads. Organizational scientists have studied the adoption of business approaches like management-by-objectives, total quality management (TQM), business process re-engineering, just-in-time manufacturing, scorecard methods, and others. Their work has led to an interesting body of literature about management innovations and organizational change.
One idea from this literature is that management innovations can morph from 
the original ideas of their founders. Over time TQM began to promote practices that quality gurus like W. Edwards Deming warned against, for instance, bestowing individual rewards for quality objectives accomplished. And sometimes organizations take liberties with the specifics of an innovation. They might
Dr. Deming decide to use only the components they’re most comfortable with or add their own idiosyncratic twists. [Read more...]
The links between elaborate economic models and reality can be downright mysterious! In 1959 one economist described economic models this way:
“Econometric theory is like an exquisitely balanced French recipe, spelling out precisely with how many turns to mix the sauce, how many carats of spice to add, and for how many milliseconds to bake the mixture at exactly 474 degrees of temperature. But when the statistical cook turns to raw 
materials, he finds that hearts of cactus fruit are unavailable, so he substitutes chunks of cantaloupe; where the recipe calls for vermicelli he uses shredded wheat; and he substitutes green garment die for curry, ping-pong balls for turtle’s eggs, and, for Chalifougnac vintage 1883, a can of turpentine.” Stefan Valavanis – quoted in Kennedy, P., 2008. A Guide to Econometrics, 5th ed., p. 2.)
Valavanis’ main concern is the quality of empirical data that economists introduce into their models—the classic garbage-in/garbage-out problem. But the larger point is that reconciling economic theory with reality has not been a particularly strong suit for the field of economics. Quite a lot of economic theory must be accepted on faith. These leaps-of-faith are… [Read more...]
“Everything Old is New Again” is the title of a 1999 article in American Libraries by Douglas Raber, author of the excellent and eye-opening book, Librarianship and Legitimacy: The Ideology of the Public Library Inquiry. The article sug- gests that the Inquiry, a comprehensive assessment of public librarianship initiated by ALA in the late 1940′s, continues to be relevant to libraries today. While in library school I discovered Raber’s book in the stacks of Cleveland Public Library. The book was so inspiring that I got ahold of 3 of the 7 volumes of the Inquiry (thank you, CPL!) and read them also.
Now the next piece in my story: My colleague Keith Curry Lance had recom- mended a podcast series to me. It is called “Longshots” and is broadcast by Sarah Long, Executive Director of the North Suburban Library System outside Chicago. 
I decided to take a listen and chose a December 2008 interview with Cathy de Rosa and Jenny Johnson, primary authors of the OCLC study, From Funding To Awareness: A Study of Library Support in America. A couple of months ago I studied the first half of this voluminous and highly graphicized report. In case I never got back to the second half, I thought I’d see how the audio book version went. [Read more...]
Posted in Advocacy, Research
Tagged awareness of library services, library funding, library marketing, merit, North Suburban Library System, OCLC, Public Library Inquiry, quality, value, worth
