WebJunction

At the Petersburg Public Library in Petersburg, Alaska (pop 3,126) we have begun publishing an Annual Report to demonstrate our impact in the community. In the last year we have seen our usage go up significantly and so we looked for a way to share our good news with the community - an Annual Report was the perfect solution. Most of the statistics we used in the report were pulled from the required numbers that we keep for the Alaska State Library - so obtaining the numbers was simple. In our first report we covered basic usage statistics like circulation and visits to help communicate the 30% increase in business that we have seen over the last 12 months. We had also completed a community survey early in the year so a synopsis of the results was included. This included important information community dissatisfaction with our current facility and strong community interest in more open hours at the library. Needless to say these results were included strategically because soon we will being a capital campaign for a new facility and we hope to secure funds increase staffing.

Initially the report was presented to Library Board for approval. The Board then went on to strategize about the best ways to make the document public. We shared our Report with Petersburg's City Council as part of our regularly scheduled report to Council. The report was included in their packets and then elaborated on by a Library Board member during the Council meeting. The report was submitted to the local newspaper and radio station. As a result the report got great media coverage. The newspaper published a lengthy and very complimentary article about recent improvements to the library and a similar news story was heard on the radio. While we would have liked to send a copy of our report to all Petersburg residents, but our small budget prevented us from doing so. Next year we will post it on our library's website and look for other ways to increase the reports visibility.

For us, the Annual report was a fairly straightforward and simple way to share our story with the community. It is a 2 page document (double sided), printed in color, and has a clear bold layout. It didn't take much time to pull together and has had a remarkable impact on community understanding of the library. Many people are astounded to learn we lend over 30,000 items annually. We also used the document as a venue to thank donors, volunteers and board members. The annual report is a powerful tool to show local people what a BIG impact our rather small library has in the community. While this year's Annual Report focused primarily on output measures, next year we will start to include more outcome based measures. This dovetails nicely with our municipality's recent initiative to move to performance based budgeting and, ultimately, outcome based budgeting. We foresee that the library's Annual Report will function not only as a public relations tool, but as an compelling document to support our annual budget requests.