Overview of Evaluation Research

Evaluation is a mechanism to understand a system. Evaluative research in general employs the same standard methods used in research, but for another purpose which is the assessment of an organization, a service, a collection, etc… and to recommend ways of improvement. Evaluation uses measurements as a method to analyze a collection or a service in a library. However, measurements cannot be an indicator of quality by themselves. The analysis of findings or data gathered using measurements will lead to an assessment of the quality of a collection or a service in a library. The importance of evaluation in libraries and information centers is reflected by many needs, the most important are:
- To accredit decisions making so they will be based on facts.
- To describe resources at your library and recommend the best ways to benefit from them.
- To assess a department, a product or a service in order to improve it.
The most important step in an evaluative research is to set the goal specifically and clearly in order to study the service or the product in a careful way and to provide recommendations and results.
The first step in an evaluative research is to identify the problem that will be treated by the study and to set the goal of the research in a clear and specific way. The evaluation should be carefully and thoroughly designed. The evaluative research can respond to external factors, internal issues, or to a problematic issue in general. There are many methods that can be used in an evaluative research solely or combined. Each of these methods has its strengths and limitations. Also, each method use different perspective to gather data and analyze a service or a product. Some are based on statistics, others are qualitative and rely more on observation and comparison to gather and analyze data.
Evaluation methods that include analysis and operations research are considered as an independent system such as other systems in the library (circulation, reference, acquisitions…). There are three basic rules to understand systems:
- The library cannot live alone without interaction with the community and surrounding libraries.
- Emphasizing ore reducing a service in an institution ore library will affect positively or negatively other institutions or libraries.
- Nothing is for free.
Ranganathan’s laws are considered the basic goals for evaluating library services. Analyzing the usage of books, the needs of users, the best way to follow in order to save the time of the reader, and how to set and maintain long term goals for the improvement of the library as an organism.
A well defined action plan is the base of a successful evaluation. After finishing the evaluative research, the last important step is to evaluate the evaluation in order to find to which extent it accomplished the goals.