WebJunction

Demonstrating your library’s impact in your community:  it’s more important than ever.  Fortunately, there are new initiatives everywhere—at the local, state, and national levels—that can help you develop and communicate your library’s value with more power and focus than ever.  And there’s a great deal of fruitful discussion as well, about what libraries are and what their role in society should be.

Here’s a list of new materials we’ve assembled for WebJunction’s Focus on Demonstrating Impact, 2005.

In addition to the items listed below, take a look also at these great resources from WebJunction’s 2004 Focus on Demonstrating Impact.

Road Map to Demonstrating Impact: Updates

We’ve got an updated Road Map to help you plan out and execute a strategy for demonstrating your library’s impact. 

Even better, we'll provide the chauffeur and travel guide. On February 1, 2005, at 3 PM EST, WebJunction hosted a live event to talk through the Road Map and discuss practical ways you can plan and carry out a Demonstrate Impact campaign of your own.  View the archive of this live event. (No password required.)

If you’re already familiar with last year’s version of the road map, take a look at this summary of the resources that are new this year:

Part I: Strategize

• Joan C. Durrance and Karen E. Fisher’s new book, How Libraries Help, offers a comprehensive methodology for defining and measuring library outcomes.   We’ve got an excerpt right here.
• The Friends of the Libraries USA has an excellent workbook with complete planning materials.  We’ve posted an excerpt that outlines advocacy campaign strategies.
  Note: FOLUSA is publishing a survey on the impact of Friends groups, available around February 1.  Keep an eye on their web site (www.folusa.org) for details.
• Jeannette Woodward’s new book, The Customer Driven Library, explores what it means for libraries to "Focus on the Bottom Line.”

Part II: Quantify

• Florida State University’s E-Metrics project is a useful tool for measuring one highly significant but hard-to-quantify element of library impact: patron use of online resources.
• This groundbreaking report, also from Florida, lays out a framework for determining return on investment in Florida libraries.  It’s an instructive tool that can help shape your own thinking about quantifying your library’s value.
• Here are some questions to consider about data collection, from Mark Smith’s Collecting and Using Library Statistics.

Part III: Demonstrate

• WebJunction member Molly Rodgers, of Honesdale, PA, has put together an effective graphic to demonstrate the national and global reach of a local small-town library.
• Bob Watson of Lake Villa (IL) District Library sent this letter to his mayor and board members, translating the value of his library into dollars and cents.
• We’ve posted annotated notes from Kathy St. John’s recent California Library Association presentation on Talking to Power.
• Enlisting library trustees is a key part of any strategy for demonstrating impact.   This excerpt from Mary Y. Moore’s Trustee's Handbook focuses on the board’s role in advocacy.
• Sally Gardner Reed’s Making the Case for Your Library has an excellent discussion of how to get others on board with the library’s message.

Thinking Hard

Should libraries operate like businesses?  Where do they fit into a rapidly changing political landscape?  The resources below will help you think through these crucial issues.

• Michael McGrorty’s blog "Library Dust" is full of insightful comment.  In this piece from just before last November’s elections, he considers whether opponents of libraries haven’t done a better job of making the dollars-and-cents case.
• And this chapter from the thought-provoking online piece Barbarians at the Gates of the Library calls into the question the assumptions of the consumer society that lie behind many of the changes at work in libraries today.
• Continue this conversation on WJ's message boards or start one of your own! Our members get practical or theoretical about libraries and the Almighty Dollar in their response to those Barbarians at the Gates (Again!) and to the commercialization of libraries.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.