How-To

How to Communicate Value Using Assessment Evidence
By Amanda B. Albert
Being an information literacy coordinator at a university requires convincing faculty members that library instruction is valuable, as well as teaching students how to do better research. In this case study, Amanda Albert explains how she tackles both tasks, gathering assessment data from both students and professors to create a “feedback loop” in which each side informs the other. This keeps her library instruction relevant and helps build trust with both target audiences.

Special Report

LMCC Moved to Snowy St. Louis
By Kathy Dempsey
MLS editor Kathy Dempsey attended the fourth annual Library Marketing and Communications Conference, which took place in St. Louis for the first time. She reports on nine sessions, sharing examples of how peers from across North America have taken on challenges and met marketing goals. One even convinced her public library board to spend money on advertising.

Sustainable Thinking: Ensuring Your Library’s Future in an Uncertain World, by Rebekkah Smith Aldrich
The phrase “library sustainability” could refer to environmental choices or to keeping libraries funded and operating—this book covers both. MLS editor Kathy Dempsey writes about how they’re blended together in this guide. The author, Rebekkah Smith Aldrich, has spent many years as an advocate, fighting for funds in libraries in New York state, and she’s also certified as a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) professional. Dempsey concludes that everyone should read this book and put its recommendations into practice to help ensure a future for libraries.

This issue carries news about the winner of CILIP’s Libraries Change Lives Award and The New York Times’ I Love My Librarian Award. It notes how the two most recent ALA presidents have been working to increase awareness of the value of libraries and points to details on library funding votes across the U.S. from November’s election. This section names a new “early adopter” of a growing “community engagement system” and offers details on three books of use for marketing and promotion.