About

Observation Deck aims to provide easy to use toolkit to capture and organize Ah Ha! moments in hands-on library programs to illustrate their impact and support librarians in driving continuous improvement.

Mission & Vision

We believe that ah ha moments, connections, and relationships are what bring people back to library programming again and again. Stories of these moments are just as important for measuring a library’s outcomes and impacts as the stats they collect from attendance and circulation. 

Librarians are experts in hands-on experimental programming. More than that, they are innovators in the field, consistently striving for better experiences for their patrons that they care so much about. Yet these innovations are not always highlighted in the ways that libraries measure and report about their impact to communities. 

Stories are powerful tools to round out the full vision of a library’s impact beyond traditional data metrics. They help engage with patrons, drive funding conversations, and consider allocation of resources. Yet documentation of these library ah ha moments is hard to do and challenging to maintain by busy staff with limited capacity. 

We aim to provide easy to use tools to capture and organize ah ha moments in hands-on library programs to illustrate that impact and support librarians in driving continuous improvement. - Giving facilitators on the ground the tools they need to tell the stories that matter about their libraries and to be seen with a clear view. 

We know we will succeed when the Observation deck is in the hands of librarians who need it, no matter the size of their library or library system, and librarians are empowered to share their stories with each other and their communities. 

The Problem

In public libraries, magical moments of discovery, pride, agency, and creativity are happening every day. Sometimes that moment manifests in an expectant silence as hands and minds are engaged in a task, and at other times, the moment bursts to life as patrons start to open up to librarians and each other as they work. 

We’ve seen it happen, we’ve told those stories to each other or even managed to snap a photo of the action in real time. Librarians are natural collectors. We collect stories and store them in our memories or maybe in a journal, or photos… Somewhere? A Google drive? A desktop computer? A great big album on the library iPad? And, of course, attendance numbers. 

Yet, when it comes time for a newsletter, quarterly report, presentation to our board, or grant review, we’re often left scrambling. Starting from scratch each time to pull together information and documentation so we have enough data to show the impact of our programs. Or, trying to set goals and priorities for the next season of programming, while relying on only anecdotal rememberings of what went well and what didn’t from the past cycle. 

Libraries around the country are shifting to supporting hands-on experiential learning. Whether it is called arts or maker or STEAM, our spaces are busy with patrons looking for ways to learn and create in an environment that is welcoming and low risk. It’s exciting! But we all need ways to better report the impact of these shifts. 

The Observation Deck has been intentionally and purposefully designed to collect stories and qualitative outcomes overtime in a meaningful and organized system so librarians can discover connecting threads that will drive improvement and program design, and communicate their library’s lasting impacts to the people that matter.