Participatory Approaches for Learning More about Your Data

There are many ways you can gather data about your library and library programs. To ensure that your data is valid, understandable, and likely to be used in decision making it is important to include stakeholders in your data collection and analysis process. Your library’s stakeholders can be involved from initial decisions about what you want to learn about your library to collecting, analyzing, and even reporting the data. In this highly interactive workshop, attendees will participate in and discuss different techniques for involving stakeholders in the evaluation cycle.

Learning Objectives

After taking this workshop, participants will be able to:

• describe participatory and collaborative methods for collecting data;
• conduct participatory evaluation techniques for different times in the evaluation cycle; and
• select the most appropriate participatory method to use for different types of data collection or analysis.

 

Instructors:

Karen Vargas serves as Evaluation Specialist for the NNLM Evaluation Office (NEO), based at the University of Washington. Vargas participates in evaluating the programs of the NNLM; assists people in their program and evaluation planning; and writes posts about evaluation for the NEO Shop Talk blog. Prior to this, she was the Outreach and Evaluation Coordinator for the NNLM South Central Region.

Cynthia Olney, Assistant Director, National Network of Libraries of Medicine Evaluation Office, Health Sciences Library, University of Washington–Seattle

 

MLA CE Credits: 4