I\u2019m going to start this post with a confession: I failed a statistics class in college.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never been a math lover, and honestly, this sort of thing can scare me if I think about it too much.\u00a0 I know that I\u2019m not alone in this feeling, but I\u2019m willing to bet that everyone in the full ballroom on Thursday morning at the Public Library Association conference would agree that data is an essential way that we librarians can tell our stories and educate others on our impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
The morning\u2019s presenters were Rebecca Millerjohn, a youth services librarian at Madison Public Library, and Kailea Saplan, PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.\u00a0 The session was called A Year of Hands-on Program Observations and Outcomes with Our IMLS Digital Toolkit<\/em>.\u00a0 Rebecca and Kailea started their presentation with a question: how do librarians communicate those more qualitative outcomes we see each day?\u00a0 Or as they put it on their slides: \u201cWe can see the magic happening\u2026 but how do we assess it?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n When they realized a tool to answer this question didn\u2019t exist yet, they set about creating their own. One of the main problems they identified was that telling a coordinated story across locations, program types, and time can get tangled. Together with Michael Diedrick and Sonal Jain (lead developer and designers at Byte), and in collaboration with Madison Public Library, Waupaca Area Public Library, and Skokie Public Library, they created Observation Deck<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Observation Deck is a web-based tool for observational assessment. Built on practical feedback (not interrupting the flow of a program, for example), library systems can set their own outcome frameworks and<\/em> specify indicators of each outcome. Librarians can then assess programs by choosing those custom indicator tags, typing descriptions, or even taking photos(!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s an example.\u00a0 The other day, I co-presented a toddler dance party with a coworker.\u00a0 During the program, I noticed a few of the more shy toddlers watching their peers then (by the end of the program) being brave enough to join in with us.\u00a0 That is a win for the social emotional and cognitive development of those children!\u00a0 And with Skokie Public Library\u2019s general programming framework, I could express through tags that have already been created (Learning and exploration: trying something new; engagement: observing others).\u00a0 I could also pair that observation with my program in Observation Deck to see where we succeeded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While that\u2019s exciting enough, Observation Deck goes further. Librarians can look back at previous programs to evaluate themselves or search by tags to see how they fulfilled a given goal in a given period. It even lets users run reports to see a snapshot of their library\u2019s educational impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While the team behind Observation Deck is still untangling how to make this service easily and widely available, it was inspiring to peek forward to a tool that will help even the most number-phobic among us quantify their value to their communities.\u00a0 Because at the end of the day, data can stop being scary and start being useful when we just have the right tools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alice Mackey<\/strong> (she\/her\/hers) is a Youth Services Librarian at Delaware County District Library<\/a> in Ohio.\u00a0 Though this is her eleventh year in libraries, this will be her first PLA experience.\u00a0 That means she\u2019s excited to sponge up all the ideas she can get her brain on!\u00a0 At the conference, you\u2019ll find her either scribbling notes, drinking diet coke, or trying to do both simultaneously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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