Best Value and Better Performance in Libraries

E: Consultancy support from Library and Information Specialists

E2: Particular strengths for the three areas of Best Value

What we bring to three main areas of the Best Value Review process:

Measuring performance and assessing impact

• Our ground-breaking work on assessing the impact of public libraries¹ has just been published. (This grew out of our national evaluation of public library involvement in the National Year of Reading² )
• We are now concentrating on benchmarking around outcomes

Objective commentary on the implementation of Best Value

• We have first-hand strategic experience of working through Best Value reviews with public library clients
• Our national programme on research methods for librarians is now being offered for the third time
• On the strategic front, our work has included evaluating the two national training organisations in the libraries and cultural sectors for Resource: The Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries

Enacting the four 'C's': addressing specific issues

• We are continuously monitoring alternative ways of organising and delivering library services (one example is our national review of school library services management³ )
• Recent commissions are putting great emphasis on partnership working at local and regional level
• We recently reviewed the use and management of volunteers in libraries and produced guidelines for The Library Association⁴

1. STREATFIELD, D.R., MARKLESS, S., COOKMAN, N. and others Best Value and better performance in libraries Library and Information Commission Research Report 52 [back]

2. STREATFIELD, D.R. and others Rediscovering reading: Public Libraries in the National Year of Reading Information Management Associates [in press] [back]

3. MARKLESS, S. and STREATFIELD, D.R. School Library Services: from Survival to Growth? Library and Information Commission Research Report 49 [back]

4. COOKMAN, N., HAYNES, D. and STREATFIELD, D.R. The use of volunteers in public libraries: a report to The Library Association , 2000 [back]

 

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