How Libraries and Librarians Help: A Guide to Identifying User-Centered Outcomes

Being able to tell your library's story, illustrating how library services provide value and help the community and users, is the key to your library's future. The practice of measuring outcomes is becoming crucial to the library's ongoing mission: libraries are being called upon to address the value of library programs by assessing their effects on library patrons and the community as a whole. With funding under a National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), Durrance and Fisher have developed the How Libraries and Librarians Help (HLLH) Outcome Model, field testing it in six libraries over two years. In this practical reference, they share their findings, cutting-edge, step-by-step HLLH methods, and library success stories that bring the process to life with outcomes like, Empowering Youth and Strengthening Community. interpret data with seven easy exercises; Apply the four-step process to assess and present outcomes; Measure and report your library's contributions; Draw together all the pieces to communicate a compelling case for library services; To stay in the game, library directors, administrators, managers, and community leaders must prove the value of the library and its services using outcome measures. Here's how to quantify the contribution of your library's programs to individuals and communities to gain recognition and funding.

This how-to-do-it guide both explains how to assess library services and offers practical ways to share experiences and frame the library story. The authors used a National Leadership Grant to develop the How Libraries and Librarians Help (HLLH) Outcomes Model to communicate and measure the impact of library services. It is divided into three parts: "Outcomes," "How to Measure and Predict Outcomes," and "Putting Outcomes to Use," and includes sample outcomes models, a community user survey, and tips on matching outcomes and audiences. The chapter on ways to predict outcomes and examples from people who have used the HLLH model are especially useful. Public libraries need to offer objective evidence of what programs work to underscore how necessary libraries are to peoples' lives, and this practical guide will help. Patricia Hogan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved