Book Review: Getting Started with Evaluation

Abstract

Getting Started with Evaluation. By Peter Hemon, Robert E. Dugan, and Joseph R. Matthews. Chicago: ALA Editions, 2014. 242 p. $65 softcover (ISBN: 978-0-8389-1195-2). Articles, books, blogs, and webinars about assessment of technical and public services in both academic and public libraries abound. Getting Started with is the latest American Library Association contribution to this mix. The authors of this title have published often in the subject; each has extensive experience in the field of library management, especially in the area of evaluation. All three have taught in library schools at some point in their careers. They acknowledge, however, that most practicing librarians did not take a course in research methods during their studies. This book is intended to provide an introduction to evaluation to those librarians as well as to current students in information management and research methods courses. The book is logically structured to serve this need. Chapter 1 begins with an overview of the topic of evaluation, complete with definitions and lists, providing vocabulary to enable subsequent examination of the topic. As the authors note early in the text, Evaluation is the process of identifying and collecting data about specific services or activities, establishing criteria by which their success can be measured, and determining the quality of the service or activity--the degree to which it accomplishes stated goals and objectives (2). The authors establish this relationship between management and evaluation immediately and continue to reference it throughout the book, using further chapters to explore the evaluation process, library metrics, the audiences for evaluation (both internal and external), specifics about measuring, and how best to communicate results. As each of these topics is explored, the emphasis remains on the integration of evaluation into everyday library management. The explanation of the process for evaluation includes practical suggestions for how to accomplish each step (e.g. the SPICE model for determining a question to study appears on p. 19). The authors provide a range of actions and suggestions for how to assess a variety of library metrics (surveys, return on investment studies, cost-benefit analyses, etc.), from simple to complex. They include a variety of topics that are on my radar, like ethnographic research and measuring library contributions toward the completion agenda, a pressing issue at community colleges. Readers are urged to adapt these metrics to their own environments. There are many examples of ways to evaluate; both internal sources of data (collected at library and institutional levels) and external sources of data (sets of data available elsewhere for comparison) are described in detail. The authors generally discourage self-reported data in favor of measuring actual behaviors of library users while acknowledging that qualitative measures are required for a complete picture of the user experience. The goal of changing fives through exposure to libraries and library services is repeatedly emphasized throughout these sections of the book. …