Say It with Data: A Concise Guide to Making Your Case and Getting Results

Citation

Gillian Hallam (2015), "Say It with Data: A Concise Guide to Making Your Case and Getting Results", Library Management, Vol. 36 No. 6/7, pp. 536-537. https://doi.org/10.1108/LM-06-2015-0037

This slender volume has principally been written for school librarians and public librarians with the aim of providing them with an understanding of the importance of evidence-based advocacy. The author, Priscille Dando, is an educational specialist supporting secondary school library programmes in the USA. She argues that as libraries are being challenged to prove their worth in times of fiscal restraint, there is an imperative for library staff to engage in a sustained advocacy campaign through ongoing positive and influential communication with their stakeholders. To craft convincing messages that target specific strategic outcomes, librarians need to grasp four key principles of effective communication: ensuring a clearly defined objective is paired with an understanding of target audiences; having compelling data at the heart of the message; providing simple and arresting presentation of that data; using positive, persuasive communication techniques (p. viii).

The text is structured around these key principles. It opens with two chapters which outline the importance of planning the communication, covering the objective of the advocacy message and the identification of the appropriate audience (Chapter 1) and an exploration of the secrets of effective communication (Chapter 2). The reader is introduced to the fundamentals of collecting and interpreting statistics (Chapter 3) with a discussion on two common data collection methods: surveys (Chapter 4) and focus groups (Chapter 5). The book concludes with some ideas about how to visually present the data using presentation software and Web 2.0 tools (Chapter 6). The discussion is supported by a series of checklists and sample survey instruments, a bibliography and an index.

This is clearly an introductory text for library staff who have had very little exposure to research activities. With an informal and chatty tone, Dando draws on her own experience to give a short, sharp overview of why and how research should be used by library practitioners, with the potential to encourage those working in smaller libraries to “give it a go”. However, while it does not attempt to be an academic guide to research methodologies, it is likely that many readers who have no prior knowledge will want to learn more about good research practice. There would be considerable value in providing a structured guide to further information about authoritative sources to support the novice researcher. Dando is undoubtedly passionate about evidence-based advocacy and with this book she hopes to inspire other librarians to document and market the value of their services and programmes.