The changes in our library have been years in the making and
influenced by so many factors, but (gasp) not necessarily data driven. Don’t get me wrong, we haven’t been blindly
grasping at change; it’s just that our transformation has been more influenced by
research and observation. Research that included reaching out to our student
body with surveys and focus groups and then extending beyond our walls to
others who embrace the same student-centered philosophy. Observations that made
it easy to look around our school and recognize that a large percentage of our
population was not utilizing the library and its resources. So in our case, research
+ observation = change!
Informally, we have been continuously monitoring progress…noticing
students in the library that we hadn’t seen before, scheduling classes who
didn’t typically use library services, teaching more lessons than ever
before. I guess you could call it a “gut
feeling” that things were going exactly as we anticipated. Honesty, we were
getting busier by the day, and feeling good about the progress we were
making.
Then one day an opportunity presented itself that left us
saying, “Dang, we need hard evidence!” Our
library was selected to be the site of a district wide administrator meeting
and we were given the opportunity to share about the transformation of our
library. We both knew that there was no
way we could stand in front of this group and say that our gut tells us it’s
working. That would be nothing short of
awkward. Thankfully, for our monthly
library reports we track current data and have access to our historical data as
well (whew).
With fingers crossed and holding our breath, we started
digging into the data. What data would provide
tangible evidence that we really are having an impact? We landed on three data points that would
back up the things we were observing in our library – circulation statistics,
student walk-ins (these are students who come in each day without their whole
class), and the number of lessons we were teaching. To be sure we were comparing apples to
apples, we looked at the 1st semester data from last year compared
to 1st semester data this year.
After double (maybe triple) checking our numbers, we breathed a huge sigh
of relief that all of our data backed up what our gut was telling us.
In the end, we recognize that the world we live in is highly
data driven. Although we are celebrating
the positive data trends, I truly believe that observing and following your gut
is still really powerful. Look around,
get to know your students and teachers, tailor your library to meet the needs
of your population, and always continue to monitor and adapt; when you do, the
data will become another tool in your toolbox!
