Developing a new assessment tool for librarians

Madison Public Library, in collaboration with Waupaca Area Public Library and Skokie Public Library, is developing a librarian’s toolkit application for collecting and analyzing qualitative data and outcomes in library programs. Learning outcomes help libraries develop relationships, develop confidence, engage in self-directed tasks, or exercise creativity. 

Learning outcomes that are important to libraries like developing relationships, developing confidence, engaging in self-directed tasks, or exercising creativity, are exceptionally hard to measure, but not impossible. There is a broad and established practice of measuring or capturing evidence of outcomes like these through observation. However, those observations are most commonly accomplished by working with an outside evaluator or academic institution.

The goal of this toolkit is to provide infrastructure and best practices for practicing librarians to accomplish these observations on their own, analyze the results, and make data based claims about the success of their hands-on library programming that they can easily share with a variety of stakeholders. 

Learn more:

Follow the progress of the app’s development.

Discover more resources for educators.