Determining how libraries and librarians help

Researchers and librarians will need to work together to articulate the outcome patterns that occur across services and to assist in the important definition and conceptual development likely to occur as librarians' acceptance and use of this approach to evaluation grows. Academic librarians seeking to determine the impact of library services and information literacy approaches have already begun to move into this stage of development. Public library researchers and librarians should be prepared to move into a period of "develop[ing] definitions and concepts that support more effective communication and use" of outcomes such as described by Kyrillidou (2002). This period will be followed by more research aimed at identifying relevant outcomes that actually build on previous work; this will likely be followed, as Kyrillidou suggests, by definition tightening, testing, and honing data collection approaches. It is difficult at this stage to predict the trajectory of this research. If it is shaped by external frameworks that speak to decision-makers, government agencies, researchers, and citizens as discussed in the article's opening paragraphs, there is more chance the research will provide librarians with the tools they need to determine and articulate their contributions and those of libraries.

NOTES

(1.) For more information about this research, see: http://www.si.umich.edu/libhelp/.

(2.) The coauthor of this paper has also published under the name of Karen E. Pettigrew.

(3.) Evanston Public Library. http://www.evanston.lib.il.us/library/mission-statement.html.

(4.) Boulder Public Library. http://www.boulder.lib.co.us/general/annual/1999/mission.html.

(5.) Los Angeles Public Library. http://inside.lapl.org/manuals/StrategicPlan.pdf.

(6.) See: http://www.sztaki.hu/conferences/deval/.

(7.) These tools, entitled Putting outcome evaluation in context: A toolkit, can be found on the Internet. See: http://www.si.umich.edu/libhelp/toolkit/index.html.

(8.) See http://www.si.umich.edu/libhelp/ for additional case studies, methodological approaches, and related articles.

(9.) Putting outcome evaluation in context: A toolkit, http://www.si.umich.edu/libhelp/toolkit/ index.html, provides an introduction to outcome evaluation as well as a multistep approach to identifying outcomes in a particular setting using contextual approaches.

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