Changes in Library Evaluation: Responding to External Pressures in the Institution of Museum and Library Services’ Measuring Success Initiative

This chapter examines the challenges of developing and implementing a new national evaluation approach in a complex library funding program. The approach shifts a prior outcome-based evaluation legacy using logic models to one relying on nonlinear logic mapping. The new approach is explored by studying the Measuring Success initiative, launched in March 2011 for the largest funded library services program in the United States, the Institute for Museum and Library Services formula-based Grants to States program. The chapter explores the relative benefits of nonlinear logic maps and emphasizes the importance of scaling evaluation from individual projects toward clusters of similar library services and activities. The introduction of this new evaluation approach required a new conceptual frame, drawing on diffusion, strategic planning, and other current evaluation theories. The new approach can be widely generalized to many library services, although its focus is on a uniform interorganizational social network embedded in service delivery. The chapter offers a new evaluation perspective for library service professionals by moving from narrow methodological concerns involving measurement to broader administrative issues including diffusion of library use, effective integration of systematic data into program planning and management, and strengthening multi-stakeholder communication.