Today, more than ever, school libraries need to show their worth to hold their ground in the ever-tightening budget that governs the school community.  Evaluating and providing evidence-base practice for the use of funds has become the catch cry in every aspect of education, however, it is not a simple task (Smith, 2013).

Before you can evaluate anything, you have to be able to measure it first, and herein lies the difficulty.  A school library is no longer just physical resources of books, teachers and resources available between 7:30am and 4:30pm, it has evolved to include the intangible resources that can be accessed 24/7 by the library users.  To evaluate a library, you need both qualitative and quantitative data on the service or processes offered by the library (Matthew, 2018, p. 16).  Historically, we used quantitative collection measures focussing on input, ratio of resources to students or circulation statistics, however, these measures show activity, but not the value of the resource (Genoni, 2007, p. 126).  As a resource to the school community, we offer more than books, space and time, we offer programs and resources that can be accessed anywhere at any time and we need evaluative measurements to validate these programs existence.  These output measures track where our programs and users meet and emphasise output.  They can include: sampling/surveying individuals or groups; collection mapping; measuring student access (individual fill rates); potential curriculum support rates; and then compared to actual curriculum support rates (Kimmel, 2014, pp. 61-68).  These measurement techniques, although time consuming are invaluable to teacher librarians to ensure that the collection they have developed is truly meeting the needs of their users.  The reality of our situation as teacher librarians is that we a living in an economic time of open sources of information where many people will not see our worth unless we prove it to them empirically through statistics and data (Oddone, 2016; Novak, 2016).

References

Genoni, P. (2007). Current issues in library collection. In S. Ferguson (ed), Libraries in the twenty-first century: Charting new directions in information services (pp. 123-143). Wagga Wagga, NSW: Centre for Information Studies. Retrieved from https://linkinghub-elsevier-com.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/retrieve/pii/B9781876938437500089

Kimmel, S. C. (2014). Developing collections to empower learners. American Library Association. Retrieved from ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy.csu.edu.au

Matthew, J. R. (2018). Evaluation and measurement of library services. Santa Barbara: Libraries Unlimited.

Novak, B. (2016). It’s time: let’s improve schools’ perceeptions of teacher librarians. Connections(99). Retrieved from https://www.scisdata.com/connections/searchconnections?searchFor=the%20importance%20of%20school%20libraries%20in%20the%20google%20age&page=1

Oddone, K. (2016). The importance of school libraries in the Google age. Connections(98). Retrieved from https://www.scisdata.com/connections/issue-98/the-importance-of-school-libraries-in-the-google-age

Smith, M. (2013, March 26). Evidence-based education: Is it really that straightforward? Retrieved from The Gaurdian: https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2013/mar/26/teachers-research-evidence-based-education