Putting Evidence to Work in Your Library

Course

Using Evidence in Your Library Program [1:59]

In this lesson, Jeffrey DiScala introduces the concept of evidence-based practice (EBP) and how it applies to the school library.

So you want to change some things in your library program, but you're not sure which direction to go. Maybe you need some extra funding for a new part of your collection, you want to expand some services, or you want to switch to a new schedule, but you are not exactly sure how to go about it. Perhaps, you keep hearing about teaching coding to students, but you don't have any experience with it and you're not sure how to present it in your program.

What you need is evidence. Using evidence, having an evidence-based practice, will help you do a number of different things in your school library.

Evidence-based practice, or EBP, allows for the continual improvement of your school library's program ensuring the most effective methods for all aspects of the program. Maintaining a practice that focuses on evidence will provide you with data to present to stakeholders about the impact and effectiveness of your school library program.

In this workshop, I'm going to go into an in-depth view of how you can collect evidence and put it to work for you.

There are lots of different types of evidence that can help you in your work, and I'm going to focus on practices that come from the work of Ross Todd, a professor at Rutgers University. Todd presents three different types of evidence that we can use in evidence-based practice: evidence for practice, evidence in practice, and evidence of practice.

Now, I know, I just said the same thing with three different prepositions. In the next lesson, we are going to walk through each of those, provide some examples, and, thankfully, give them some new descriptive titles to help you follow along a little better.

Writing a Statement of Intent

In this lesson, DiScala discusses several reasons that a school librarian might want to integrate evidence-based practice into their program and there are many more. What's yours? Use the Planning Template in the Resources below to complete the Reflect & Practice activity.

RESOURCES:

Template

REFLECT & PRACTICE:

Use the questions on page 2 of the Planning Template to reflect on how your library program could be improved with the addition of more evidence-based practice and how you think it will benefit student learning.

MLA Citation

"Putting Evidence to Work in Your Library: Writing a Statement of Intent." School Library Connection, January 2019, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2186018?learningModuleId=2186016&topicCenterId=2247903.

Entry ID: 2186020

Additional Resources

Bibliography.

About the Author

Jeffrey DiScala, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Darden College of Education at Old Dominion University. He earned his master's and doctorate from the University of Maryland. He is co-principal investigator for The Lilead Project, a research and professional development program for school library leaders. His research interests include education, technology, and information policies in education and professional development for school librarians and classroom teachers. He has co-authored numerous articles in publications such as Library Quarterly, School Library Research, School Libraries Worldwide, and Knowledge Quest.

MLA Citation

DiScala, Jeffrey. "Putting Evidence to Work in Your Library. Using Evidence in Your Library Program [1:59]." School Library Connection, ABC-CLIO, January 2019, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2186018?learningModuleId=2186016&topicCenterId=2247903.

View all citation styles

https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2186018?learningModuleId=2186016&topicCenterId=2247903

Entry ID: 2186018