Institute Receives U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services Grant

Posted by Alex Lehner on

The Information Use Management and Policy Institute (http://www.ii.fsu.edu) of the College of Information at Florida State University has been awarded $249,979 by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services for the project “Increasing the Effectiveness of Evaluation for Improved Public Library Decision Making and Advocacy.” Drs. John Carlo Bertot and Charles R. McClure, the Associate Director and the Director of the Information Institute, are the Co-Principal Investigators of the study.

The Information Institute, in partnership with the Omaha Public Library, Baltimore County Public Library, Mid-York Library System, and the American Library Association’s Office for Research, will investigate how “best practice” evaluation strategies can demonstrate the value of public libraries to the communities they serve through a web-based instructional, assisted, and management system (Evaluation Decision Management System – EDMS). The project, and the resulting EDMS, will assist public librarians and managers to:

  1. Identify available evaluation approaches;
  2. Select evaluation approaches that might best meet their data needs, either library developed or imposed by external funders/organizations;
  3. Develop an overall evaluation plan that makes effective and efficient use of limited library resources;
  4. Implement an evaluation plan; and
  5. Use the evaluation findings to advocate for local library support.

Using the EDMS, directors, managers, practitioners, and advocates will be able to select, analyze, and present data from various evaluation resources to demonstrate the value of library services to their communities. The EDMS builds on existing research supported by Institute of Museum and Library Services and the State Library of Florida. The project will also produce a framework to improve overall evaluation efforts; reports that describe project activities and findings; and a number of workshops, seminars, and presentations.

Ultimately, this project seeks to provide sustained guidance to public libraries in understanding and selecting appropriate evaluative approaches; access to training modules on the types and uses of evaluative approaches which would be maintained in a centralized setting; strategies for developing specific approaches to evaluation within a public library setting; and access to a sustainable web-based source of information and tools on evaluation in a public library setting.