�
Special Report � Measuring the Unmeasurable Value by Jo Lyon
Bob Usherwood
is a man with a mission: to convince public library managers and policymakers
that there is more to measuring the value of library services than looking
at numbers. In a recent article for The Bookseller, Usherwood, who
is president of the British Library Association and a professor of librarianship
in the Department of Information Studies at Sheffield University in Sheffield,
U.K., wrote: 揟he full impact of public library services on individuals
and communities cannot be demonstrated by statistics alone. Library managers
must be prepared, in all senses of that word, to use indicators that use
憇oft� as well as 慼ard� data. ... To adopt this approach is not to say
that the Audit Commission抯 憈hree Es� of economy, efficiency and effectiveness
are unimportant, but that they need to be considered in the broader context
of the service. However, the Commission抯 recent report, called 慏ue for
Renewal,� paid little attention to factors such as the ultimate value of
reading, literacy, information and knowledge. In short, it sought to measure
what was measurable but missed what is important about the service.�
Many public library managers are, he says, well aware of the fact that
their libraries do an awful lot more than is reflected in issue figures,
visitor numbers, and the like. What he was looking for was a way for them
to make that visible to their various stakeholders. 揟he library profession,
it seems to me, has been a little backward in taking on board qualitative
data as a recognized way of looking at the value of services. Social scientists
have been doing it for more than 50 years, but librarians, and their policy
makers, have always tended simply to look at things you can put a number
on. What we were looking for was a rigorous method which would allow us
to identify and present those aspects of the service that you can抰 measure
in the ordinary way, in a form that could have an influence on politicians
and public policy makers.�
Auditing the Social Value of Libraries Usherwood and his colleague Rebecca Linley developed such a method
and carried out a social audit of the public libraries of Newcastle City
Council and Somerset County Council; the research was funded by the British
Library. The resulting report, New Measures for the New Library, outlines
the project, its findings, and the objectives that informed it. Usherwood抯
original inspiration came from Social auditing: evaluating the impact of
corporate programmes (Blake, D. H. et al., New York: Praeger, 1976), and
more recently he became interested in the work of the New Economics Foundation,
which has 揳udited� U.K.-based organizations. 揥hat they抮e basically doing
is taking the approach that there is a lot of qualitative data which you
can audit in the same way as financial auditors might audit figures, and
this gives visibility to what the organization is actually doing. This
can then be evaluated against its social objectives. So we took the social
objectives of Newcastle City Council and of Somerset County Council, and
we evaluated their libraries� activities using the social audit technique.
What we came up with was some answers about what the library was and was
not doing, and some of the management reasons that were helping or hindering
it in achieving its objectives.�
Usherwood and Linley took a stakeholder approach to their research,
soliciting the view of three main groups: the politicians, the library
professionals, and a range of library users and potential users. One-to-one
interviews were conducted with the politicians and the professionals, and
focus groups were run with users and nonusers. 揑t was a question of triangulation,�
he explains. 揥e were checking what the users said against what the politicians
said against what the professionals said. From that we began to build up
a picture of what the library was actually doing in terms of things like
social cohesion and community identity梞atters which can be seen as the
social and caring aspects of a library service梐nd we obtained a vast quantity
of data which we looked at, audited, and presented in the final report.�
Every effort was made to conduct the research rigorously. 揙ne of the
issues that is sometimes raised when we talk about social auditing is that
of bias梡eople say, 慔ow do we know that the data you put in the report
isn抰 simply selected to prove what you wanted to prove?�,� says Usherwood.
揗y answer is twofold梖irstly, you basically have to trust social auditors
in the same way that you would trust financial auditors. You have to believe
that we are doing a trustworthy job. And secondly, all the way through
this project we worked with a steering group, made up of library professionals
from the relevant authorities, plus representatives from several other
bodies, including the Audit Commission, the Library Association, and the
British Library. They saw the data we were obtaining, and they were able
to assess that our final report was an honest review of the data we obtained.
Also, two-thirds of the way through the project we produced a preliminary
report which we presented to a workshop attended by politicians and practitioners
so they could have a look at what we were doing and form views on it. We
actually used that as part of the research process, in addition to seeing
it as a way of disseminating what we were trying to do.�
Reaching Some Striking Findings It was an approach that resulted in some striking findings. The final
report demonstrates that the recognized and established functions of the
public library, in terms of education, information, culture, and leisure,
remain important; but at the same time it identifies social and caring
roles, showing that public libraries promote social cohesion and community
identity by fostering connections between groups and communities.
Says Usherwood: 揙ne of the surprises for me, although perhaps it shouldn抰
have been, was the social impact of local studies collections. This was
especially strong in Newcastle, where the shipping industry has disappeared,
but people are using the local studies material on shipbuilding to help
fix a social identity. Another very interesting thing was the role of the
library in keeping small shopping communities going, rather than, as you
might expect, it being the other way round. In other words, in small towns
people will go into town in order to go to the library and then visit the
local shops, not vice versa. We also made some interesting observations
on the value of small libraries梚f you抮e just measuring things like number
of issues, there抯 a lot of pressure to close small libraries. But if you
put it in the wider social context梥uch as stopping old people from feeling
isolated, or providing small communities with an identity, and then add
all those things up, you might well come to a different conclusion on whether
you want to open or close a service point.�
The project is, as far as he knows, the first time anyone抯 done a social
audit of public library services, or used this technique. He hopes it won抰
be the last. 揑 hope there will be more of this kind of work done. At the
end of the report we抳e put what we call a framework for understanding,
which we believe can actually be used by librarians themselves, although
their ability to do it or not to do it will depend to some extent on how
much of a research infrastructure the library authority has. ... Basically
it抯 a technique that can be used by a variety of information organizations,
but what you have to have is a belief in the validity of qualitative data.
The key point is that qualitative data, rigorously gathered, is valid evidence
of the value and impact of a library service.�
Feedback so far has been promising. 揑n Somerset, we抳e gone back and
discussed the results with the managers and politicians, and made presentation
to a committee of the authority, and there was a committee decision taken
which seemed to be swayed at least in part by the social audit technique.
That was a great immediate response. We hope to do something similar at
Newcastle, and we抮e also hopeful that the library plans that the DCMS
[Department of Culture, Media and Sport] is working on at the moment might
in the future say more about qualitative data as a way of valuing the service.�
Usherwood also acknowledges that the results of a social audit could
prove to be a valuable marketing tool, in the sense that they can provide
many kinds of valid evidence of the value of a service to your fundholders,
be they politicians, as in the U.K., or boards of trustees, as in the U.S.
They can also make visible to the public just what the library can do梩hese
results can personalize it and help people relate to it.
Examples quoted in the report include this from a user in Newcastle:
揑 lost my dad and I couldn抰 get over it, and the doctor told me to go
and get ... a certain book to help us get over it from the library. So
that was a great help [because] I抎 never heard of, and never thought,
anybody felt like that ...� And this from a member of the library staff
in Somerset: 揑 have readers who come in almost the same time every week
and ... when I抳e missed someone ... I have phoned to see if they are all
right. ... We have a vast number of ladies living by themselves, and I
think it抯 that extra eye being kept on them.� As well as making fascinating
reading, such findings provide potent material for the promotion of library
services.
He stresses, though, that this is only possible if the research itself
is conducted impartially. 揂s researchers we present the data, but the
spin that people put on it really depends on them. The reason I say that
is that when this work was first going on, the Library Association was
very keen to use it as part of its campaign for National Libraries Week.
We had to point out to them that if we found out that libraries had no
social impact whatsoever, then that抯 what we would say. That抯 not what
we found, but I抦 very keen as a researcher to make that point: We抮e not
providing evidence to order. Having said that, if libraries did carry out
a social audit, then yes, they could well end up with the kind of images
that marketing people could use to communicate ideas to fundholders, members
of the public, the media, and so on. It抯 a very powerful technique.�
Jo Lyon is deputy editor of Information World Review, the
monthly newspaper for the European information community. Her e-mail address
is jolyon@vnu.co.uk.
New Measures for the New Library; A Social Audit of Public Libraries
by
Rebecca Linley and Bob Usherwood (British Library Research and Innovation
Centre Report 89), is published by the British Library Board (ISBN: 07123-97124)
and costs £20, or roughly $30. Copies and further information are
available from Bob Usherwood, Centre for the Public Library in the Information
Society, Department of Information Studies, The University of Sheffield,
Western
Bank, Sheffield S10 2TN, U.K.; +44 (0) 114 222 2635; r.usherwood@sheffield.ac.uk.
The authors also presented these findings at the International Federation
of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) conference this summer
in Amsterdam; the text is at http://ifla.inist.fr/IV/ifla64/054-94e.htm.
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Bob Usherwood
is a man with a mission: to convince public library managers and policymakers
that there is more to measuring the value of library services than looking
at numbers. In a recent article for The Bookseller, Usherwood, who
is president of the British Library Association and a professor of librarianship
in the Department of Information Studies at Sheffield University in Sheffield,
U.K., wrote: 揟he full impact of public library services on individuals
and communities cannot be demonstrated by statistics alone. Library managers
must be prepared, in all senses of that word, to use indicators that use
憇oft� as well as 慼ard� data. ... To adopt this approach is not to say
that the Audit Commission抯 憈hree Es� of economy, efficiency and effectiveness
are unimportant, but that they need to be considered in the broader context
of the service. However, the Commission抯 recent report, called 慏ue for
Renewal,� paid little attention to factors such as the ultimate value of
reading, literacy, information and knowledge. In short, it sought to measure
what was measurable but missed what is important about the service.�