Assessing impact is increasingly critical to the survival of services: managers now require comprehensive information about effectiveness, especially in relation to users. Outlining a rigorously tested approach to library evaluation and offering practical tools and highly relevant examples, this book enables LIS managers to get to grips with the slippery concept of service impact and to address their own impact questions in their planning. The 2nd edition is fully updated to include international approaches to qualitative library evaluation, new international research, and current debates on the evolving nature of evaluation, as well as reflections on the importance of involving stakeholders and of evaluation to guide advocacy.
Key topics include:
The demand for evidence
Getting to grips with impact
The research base of this work
Putting the impact into planning
Getting things clear: objectives
Success criteria and impact indicators: how you know you are making a difference
Making things happen: activities and process indicators
Thinking about evidence
Gathering and interpreting evidence
Taking stock, setting targets and development planning
Doing national or international evaluation
Where do we go from here?
Readership: Practising library and information service managers and policy makers in the field. LIS policy shapers and managers in public, education (schools, further and higher education), health and special libraries and information services working in any country or internationally and people engaged in professional education in the field such as lecturers or students.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
"Writing a review on a second edition of any book that one has reviewed before is not an easy task, especially if one's favourable opinion shows up on the cover of the second edition for attracting readers's attention. Nevertheless, I thought that it is worth repeating myself six and a half years later because this edition is as good as the first one." -- Information Research
Auflage
Sprache
Verlagsort
Zielgruppe
Für Beruf und Forschung
Professional Practice & Development
Maße
Höhe: 234 mm
Breite: 156 mm
Dicke: 18 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-1-85604-812-5 (9781856048125)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
David Streatfield leads Information Management Associates, a research, training and consultancy team working in education, health and libraries. He has over 25 years' experience in educational and social sciences research and consultancy, including several years as Head of Information Research and Development at NFER. Both David and Sharon are Independent Impact Consultants to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Global Libraries Initiative and have worked in a similar capacity for various overseas and international programmes including the International Federation of Library Associations and the United National Development Agency in Bulgaria.
Sharon Markless is a Senior Lecturer in Higher Education at King's College, London and at the University of Surrey. She carries out research and consultancy work with Information Management Associates in the field of public, academic and school libraries. She is a trained teacher and was formerly a Senior Researcher at the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER).
Impact and all that: use of some key terms in this bookPART 1: THE CONTEXT1. The demand for evidence
Why is evidence of impact an issue for libraries (and information services)?
Emerging interest in the management of change
What is distorting the picture?
Why is it important to tackle impact?
2. Getting to grips with impact
A metaphor and a model
Why is impact such a slippery concept?
Overviews of impact
Changing how we think of evidence
What does impact mean?
3. The research base of this work
What we know about impact from the management literature
Evidence-based practice and the LIS picture
The overall research picture
What we don't know
Where our model comes from
PART 2: EVALUATING IMPACT4. Putting the impact into planning
Why do we need a new evaluation model?
The model
Using the model
And the first question is
How do you currently measure your success as a service?
5. Getting things clear: objectives
Choosing where to get involved
The mission
Where can libraries make an impact?
From impact areas to objectives
Some examples of objectives
Why objectives matter
6. Success criteria and impact indicators: how you know you are making a difference
Formulating success criteria: getting the balance right
What sorts of changes will show impact?
What is an impact indicator?
What do good indicators look like?
What do you do if you don't know what impact to expect?
What makes a poor indicator?
Some issues to consider before you start writing indicators
Writing indicators
Getting the words right
Using frameworks to help you choose appropriate indicators
Some indicators
7. Making things happen: activities and process indicators
Why activities? Why now?
Identify activities
Review the activities
Process indicators
Output indicators
Process and output indicators: things to watch
The 'reach' of the service
8. Thinking about evidence
Deciding your approach to gathering evidence
The organizational context
Finding strong surrogates for impact evidence
Ethical evidence-gathering
Matching the evidence to your needs
What counts as impact evidence?
Fitness for the purpose
Other methods of gathering impact evidence
9. Gathering and interpreting evidence
Observation
Asking questions
Interviewing
Getting impact information from people in groups
Collecting stories and constructing case studies as impact evidence
Action research
Doing it!
Analysing data
Interpreting and presenting your evidence
Sources on research methods
Finding research methods e-resources
Evidence or advocacy?
10. Taking stock, setting targets and development planning
Taking stock: reviewing your impact and process indicators
Setting targets for impact
Process targets
Development planning
Planning your impact evaluation
PART 3: THE BIGGER PICTURE11. Doing national or international evaluation
Looking at the national and international picture
Negotiate the terminology
Respond to the national impact challenge
What can national or international library evaluation try to achieve?
Are you ready for impact evaluation?
Start evaluation with programme design - and learn as you go
Identifying a framework for national and international impact evaluation
Developing an approach to impact evaluation at national level
Ethical evaluation
Emergent evaluation revisited
Plan the evaluation
Starting to enact your plan
Sustain the process
Thoughts on advocacy
Some examples of impact evidence and advocacy
Impact evaluation, advocacy and service sustainability
12. Where do we go from here?
Getting impact evaluation right
Getting beyond the narrow focus
Digging deeper
Looking long enough
Getting help
Towards impact benchmarking
Towards evidence-based working?
Other visions
