Market-Based Adult Lifelong Learning Performance Measures for Public Libraries Serving Lower Income and Majority-Minority Markets



In September of 1996, the U.S. Department of Education awarded the above titled field-initiated studies grant under their National Institute on Postsecondary Education, Libraries and Lifelong Learning to Florida State University as the lead agency. Dr. Christie Koontz of GeoLib is the principal investigator of this grant, with Dean Jue, also of GeoLib, and Dr. Keith Lance of the Colorado Department of Education as co-investigators.

The specific objectives to be performed during this grant are:

 

  • Identify major majority-minority and low income public library jurisdictions throughout the U.S.;
  • Identify effective public library services for such jurisdictions;
  • Develop new performance measures for evaluating effective library services in such jurisdictions;
  • Collect baseline data using newly-developed performance measures; and
  • Develop methodology and materials to permit public libraries to use their own locally-collected data in improving the adult
  • lifelong educational services for their local population.

This and the associated web pages are designed to coordinate the data collection efforts of the many public libraries participating in this ground-breaking project as well as to share the findings of this research project with other researchers, librarians, and agencies of all types, both pubic and private. Because this web site is one of the earlier actions being taken as part of this research project, some of the information that will be found on some web pages are still under development. Please be patient for those web pages still under development and feel free to contact us (either by phone or e-mail) if you have questions you would like answered immediately.

Click here to see a copy of the original research proposal (Bear in mind we have already modified some aspects of our research relative to the original proposal.

 

Downloadable References