Public Libraries Seminar Discussion #8: Advocacy
5 November 2024
1. Is there an importance to having quantifiable data regarding the impact of a library in its community? How does this relate to advocacy?
2. Select a library. How does this library reflect the concepts of advocacy as noted in the resources from the annotated bibliography? Is there a particular area that this library does especially well in advocating for, or is there an area in which this library can improve its advocacy? Give examples.
I mean, of course, having quantifiable data is important, and not just for advocacy, since...haven't they been doing this for everything for a long time now? Work at any public library for a short amount of time, and it'll probably be apparent how open a secret it is that staff have to keep and present receipts for everything just to keep even from fiscal year to fiscal year. Writing from within the turbulence of the 2000s' financial crisis, Aabø (2009) explains:
Public libraries receive a high proportion of public funds for cultural activities and they, therefore, meet demands for more accountability. They need to prove how the taxpayers' money is used to benefit both the individual citizens and the local communities. Academic libraries, school libraries, and special libraries in different businesses meet similar types of demands, being asked for performance measurement, cost justifications, and return on investment from the administration of their university, school, or enterprise. These demands have been strengthening due to increasing economic pressure. There is no doubt that the pressure will increase considerably now (para. 3).
As we all know, the pressure is perhaps even more crushing, 15 years later. The concern in most cases, then, isn't if data is needed, but what or how many types are data are needed for what specific circumstances. For something as broad as public funding, that probably takes as comprehensive a slate as possible: circulation counts, program attendance, computer usage, door counts, website visits, social media metrics, outreach events, et cetera, et cetera. Across so many metrics, Sørensen's (2021) idea of a prism of value (Fig. 2) is quite useful in understanding how all these efforts coalesce into the value produced. "Resources are allocated to public libraries and serve as an input to be processed by the multiple components offered by public libraries" ("6.2. Value creation: through prisms of value" section), which output into the services offered by the system—which can, supposedly, be subsequently quantified into a dollar-value return of investment.
While advocating to the purse-holders or policymakers or board members and the like would involve the nitty-gritty numbers and calculations, writing all this up reminded me of how public library systems present the same to their own communities: annual reports. If those presentations stick to cold-hard data, publicly-released annual reports present their factoids through brief factoids and elegant infographics that immediately make their ROI tangible, alongside important news and/or milestones from around their system. You can probably do a web search for "public library annual report" and pull up plenty of examples, but the best one locally is (predictably) the FY23 report from Fairfax County Public Library (2023). Not only do they include all of the above, they also highlight staff development efforts and give a sneak peek at what items and services are on the horizon. It's a great way to tie a bow on a fiscal year and publicly advocate that the library is actively working towards its objectives.
References
Aabø, S. (2009). Libraries and return on investment (ROI): A meta‐analysis. New Library World, 110(7/8), 311–324. https://doi.org/10.1108/03074800910975142
Fairfax County Public Library. (2023). FY2023 Fairfax County Public Library annual report. Retrieved November 5, 2024, from: https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/library/sites/library/files/assets/documents/pdf/fcpl-annual-report_2023.pdf
Sørensen, K. M. (2021). Where’s the value? The worth of public libraries: A systematic review of findings, methods and research gaps. Library & Information Science Research, 43(1), 101067. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2020.101067