Power of Performance: PLA Performance Measures Initiative

This is a seemingly boring type of presentation about stats and outcomes measures. (Trust me. During SIF training I spend a lot of time on outcomes and everyone just have a look of horror on their face, but this program is actually very interesting.)

Overall, this program is about the importance of outcomes measurement, how to effectively administer surveys easily to the public, and how to interpret the results.  One of the most interesting pieces is the projectoutcome.org site. 

Projectoutcome.org - a free tool for public libraries to use pre-fabricated surveys in a variety of topics that we can use, a dashboard that tabulated all our data, and graphics for presentation purposes.  The purpose is for public libraries to count more than just statistics of their programs but truly measure the outcomes achieved.  

I have wanted to start collecting more data than just numbers for a while now and this might be a tool that can help us. An example that might be worth trying is with our registered story times.   Perhaps we create a survey that can be given to our participants on the first day of the series and then issue the same survey at the end which will give us a range of growth they have achieved. These types of surveys are what we always do with all of our grants so it's nothing new.  We just haven't used them with our regular programs.