Evaluation of Libraries

In one of our discussions we were defending the idea of librarians as professionals. David brought up the point that “in the academic environment librarians are constantly thought of as second class citizens because we are not conducting research, teaching, grading, and advising students.”(Magolis, 2008) This got me thinking not only about the research and publishing that librarians do but also the nature of evaluation of libraries in general.

It is a misconception that librarians do not do research; granted most of the journal articles I have read are not research based, I have read many that are. There may not be as much research going on in Library science as there is in other fields such as anthropology or physics so I suppose that the argument by professors might be more about the nature and amount of that research. There does seem to be a more practical rather than theoretical leaning to the research of librarians. However, there is research happening for example the effectiveness of a particular marketing strategy, the learning outcomes of freshmen, and usage studies. Most research in library science that I have read seems to be aimed at the study of who uses libraries and how they use them.

This leads me to the topic of evaluation. It seems that libraries and librarians constantly have to defend their existence and their need for funding, and it doesn’t seem to matter where or what type of library. But evaluation does more than this. As Rubin puts it:
“Most information services take place within an organizational context, and administrators and managers need the means to determine whether their organizations are, in fact, accomplishing what they set out to do. Such information is critical not only in evaluating current activities, but also in planning for staffing, planning future services, and determining the direction of collection development. It also provides political and economic justification for budget requests.”(2004, p.64)

How do we best evaluate the library? The usual statistics can be gathered; things like the number of items circulated, questions asked at the reference desk, hours logged into the public use computers. But does this really give us a good indication of how well the library is doing? It is easy for commercial enterprises to know if they are successful, it’s all revealed in the bottom line. But “clearly, numeric data will not address every question that arises in the management of complex organizations like libraries, even if some numeric data relating to a question are available. But neither is loose application of qualitative methods appropriate.”(MacDonald, 2007) The results from focus groups, surveys and observational studies can sometimes be just as difficult to interpret as a pure statistical analysis.

But it is for more than proving the worth of the library to those in charge of funding that we should look at what is happening at the library. If the primary mission of libraries is to serve the user then evaluation of libraries need to make sure that we are achieving our goals or if we need to reevaluate them. “The concept of the user-centered library emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s, fostered by strategic planning, total quality management, the external demands for accountability and measurable outcomes, and rapidly changing information and budgetary environments. Management strategies emphasized the need to focus on the customer and customer needs rather than organizational inputs and tasks.” (Hiller, 2004)

This past year I volunteered for the library’s strategic planning committee. I consulted not only the previous year’s annual report but also the ‘05 OCLC report on Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources, the WCU ’06 LibQual survey and the results of our library retreat the previous fall (which I think of as a sort of extended focus group). While these sources do not provide a complete picture of what is happening in our library they did give me some ideas when it came to the planning process.

I do agree with Rubin that “some types of libraries have an easier time than others in measuring and evaluation their services using [out measures]”. It must be difficult when you are trying to be so many different things to so many people to really get measure of your success. For example how do you prove how successful you are as a “place”? Do you just count the number of community events, or how many teens come to hang out after school? But evaluation is important for any library in order to keep itself on track.


Hiller, S., & Self, J. (2004, Summer). From measurement to management: Using data wisely for planning and decision-making. Library Trends, 53(1), 129-155. Retrieved June 13, 2008, from Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts database.

MacDonald, B. (2007). When numbers alone are not enough: Applications of qualitative methodologies. Feliciter, 53(1), 26-29. Retrieved June 13, 2008, from Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts database.

Magolis, D. (2008, June 10) Discussion forum #6 [post 7]. Message posted to http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=42286175612&topic=5446

Rubin, R. E. (2004). Foundations of library and information science (2nd ed.). New York: Neal-Schuman, Publishers, Inc.