How can we know that our efforts are making a difference for the communities we want to serve? The High Plains Library District's outreach team has deeply considered the impact we want to have and how to measure if we are achieving it. With researchers from the Library Research Services, it was determined that a sense of belonging is our most important community outcome. But what does "belonging" mean? How do you measure it? We realized we needed to ask what belonging means to people in our community. Focusing on the immigrant and refugee communities, we designed an evaluation to learn about people's experiences of belonging in our community and with the library. We will share the key principles, strategies, and challenges from our work. Join this session to learn how to think more creatively about understanding your communities, overcome assumptions, and how to collect meaningful data.
Learning Outcomes- Attendees will be able to examine assumptions that may interfere with collecting the most useful data about their community.
- Attendees will be able to assess how to make an evaluation more welcoming for underserved communities.
- Attendees will have greater awareness of the time and resources required to create an impactful assessment process.
