Tag: evaluation

Administrative and Management Skills

Reduce Harmful Habits: Evaluating Library Programs

| Jaime Eastman|Leave a comment
Dark blue text reads Reduce Harmful Habits. Underneath, black text reads Evaluating Library Programs. To the right of the text is an image of two speech bubbles. To the left of the text is an image of a document and magnifying glass.

This year, “traditional” New Year’s resolutions through a library lens. So far, we’ve explored ways to exercise more, live life to the fullest, eat healthier, lose weight, save money, get organized, and learn a new skill. This month, tackling one of the most common resolutions: reducing harmful habits. Rather than focusing on our own habits, we’ll explore the habits library programs develop over time. Just because we’ve always offered a program or presented it a certain way doesn’t mean that it’s still the best option. Instead, thoughful evaluation can help us find what no longer serves community needs, library goals, or even staff capacity.

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Blogger Eva Mitnick

Learning from SRP 2012

| Eva Mitnick|Leave a comment

Our Summer Reading Program ended August 11 after 9 wild weeks.  Almost all the children’s librarians at our 72 branches and Central Library reported record numbers of kids registering for the club and attending events.  Was it the heat?  The lack of summer school?  The awesomeness of our SRP? Now is the time to evaluate the summer, reflect on our successes and lessons learned, and start planning for next year. Here’s how we’re evaluating our SRP: Counting registration numbers – While they don’t tell the whole story by a long shot, they can be quite revealing.  Ours zoomed up this year, hurray!  And many were first-timers, as we discovered from our surveys (see below). Counting minutes read and books read – We just started doing this last year.  While the success of a program doesn’t necessarily hang on how many minutes were read, our administration, board of commissioners, city council,…

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