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The purpose of this paper is to outline the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Libraries (GLs) initiative approach to advocacy and how it informs, guides, and integrates impact data to support sustainability of GL program results.

The paper defines advocacy in the context of GL, and explores the GL grant planning process, tools, and collaboration between advocacy and impact specialists. Results are demonstrated through grantee examples that illustrate a variety of approaches to library advocacy using impact data at local, country, and regional levels.

The paper demonstrates the importance of identifying community needs, designing impact measures to demonstrate how libraries help to address those needs, and the variety of ways impact evidence can be used to effectively advocacy for public libraries. This basic formula can be applied to advocacy efforts ranging from a broad national policy to a small incremental change in perceptions of libraries by local decision makers.

This paper reinforces the essential link between library impact measurement data and successful advocacy.

The purpose of this paper is to report on performance measurement and impact assessment progress made in 14 countries as part of the Global Libraries initiative, starting with the early country grants in Mexico and Chile. For the mature grants in Bulgaria, Botswana, Poland, Romania, Ukraine and Viet Nam which were recently completed or are approaching completion, the nature of the country program is outlined, before the impact assessment work is described and some recent results and conclusions are reported. A similar approach is adopted with pilot and new grants in Colombia, Indonesia, South Africa, Turkey and Lithuania.

The country reports are presented as a series of case studies, in some cases supplementing those in an earlier special issue of this journal.

Where appropriate, recent country-specific survey findings are reported.

This paper shares Global Libraries IPA learning at country level with people in other countries who may be contemplating public library evaluation at regional, national or local level or who are interested in performance measurement and impact evaluation.

These cases studies reflect concentrated impact assessment and performance measurement work at country level across a range of countries over more than 12 years.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a range of innovative (for public library performance measurement and impact assessment) methods and tools developed by country teams as part of the Global Libraries (GL) initiative. Short reports are provided on: a return on investment study, a simplified data processing system for library managers and an online reporting system for public libraries in Ukraine; a study of the public image of Polish libraries in print mass media, two approaches to sustainability of performance measurement and impact assessment in Romania, through tools to conduct pop-up surveys and use of agricultural subsidies support data, assessments of changes in public library managers’ planning efforts in Poland and of their perceptions of libraries and their own role, using Modified Delphi forecasting, in Lithuania, two ways of focussing on the world of public library users by engaging non-profit organizations in library research in Poland and conducting impact studies in virtual environments in Chile.

A range of methods and tools and their uses are described.

No specific research findings are reported.

All of these tools and methods have been (or are being) trialed in national public library contexts; some have been developed over several years.

Useful for people in other (non-GL) countries who may be contemplating public library evaluation at regional, national or local level or who are interested in performance measurement and impact evaluation.

This paper is part of a GL effort to share what participants have learnt about impact planning and assessment in public libraries with the wider international libraries community.

The impact planning and assessment program of GL has been the largest sustained international public library evaluation program so far attempted. This paper reports on the more innovative evaluation activities undertaken at country level through this program.

As fake news and other disinformation are spread primarily online and erode trust in experts and institutions, they challenge the role of librarians as information gatekeepers. Experts have advocated for libraries to educate the public to resist misinformation, yet libraries cannot assume sole responsibility for information literacy work. In this chapter, the authors explore several successful information literacy programs in Ukraine, whose fake news problems made global headlines in 2014, when the Russian annexation of Crimea was accompanied by a flood of crude but effective disinformation. The authors look particularly at the Learn to Discern programs established by the international non-profit organization IREX to foster information literacy using techniques grounded in interdisciplinary expertise and carefully evaluated through pilot studies and follow-up evaluations. These programs train instructors through workshops and provide them with materials. In the first program, aimed at the general public, many of the instructors were librarians, and library facilities were heavily used to deliver the public training. In the second program, information literacy was integrated into the public school curriculum and thousands of teachers were trained to deliver expertly designed materials for particular grade levels and subjects. The authors also consider the special challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, both as a source for new forms of misinformation and as a disruptor of training previously delivered in tightly packed libraries and classrooms. These Ukrainian programs demonstrate the potential for fighting fake news and other misinformation on a scale far beyond what could be accomplished by individual libraries acting alone.