Prior to the Kickoff Institute, please complete the following tasks:

1. Complete the lunch and dietary restrictions survey by July 29.

2. Send an updated project description to info@libraryeval.org by August 5.

3. Watch the following short videos:

4. Look for 3-5 research articles that can help you think about the impact of your program/service, participants’ experiences with your program/service, and/or best practices for implementing that program/service. This may be research specifically about that program/service in libraries and/or research about a similar offering in a community-based organization, parks or recreation centers, leisure activity, out-of-school learning environment, museum, etc. We suggest conducting a broad search that includes the library and information science field but also includes fields such as education, psychology, parks and recreation, etc. You will be looking for reports of research or evaluation studies, rather than articles about ideas for programs/services or reports of what others have done in their libraries. Bring the articles you find with you to the Kickoff Institute.

5. Gather any planning documents associated with the program or service you will be evaluating (such as grant proposals, lesson plans, etc.), handouts given to patrons during the programs, and any data you have already collected (such as attendance or patron feedback). Bring these with you to the Kickoff Institute. Note: Raw data are not needed, but please bring summaries – for example, “300 people participated in the program in 2021,” “90% of participants reported on a survey that they learned something,” etc.).

6. Make sure you have access to each team member’s calendar during the Kickoff Institute. We will be scheduling a recurring 60-minute Zoom call for your team (as a group) with the instructors to help you complete your project. To simplify the scheduling process, we plan to hold your library’s coaching calls on the same day/time each month six times between September 2022 through April 2023 (e.g., 1st Mon of each month at 3:00, 2nd Thu of each month at 9:00).

7. Review the other teams’ project descriptions, available here.