Understand and demonstrate your library’s value
Libraries are the beating heart of communities – yet far too often their value is questioned, write Michelle Bond and Lou Peck
It’s hard to demonstrate impact, especially in a world where libraries are treated more like business units that need to demonstrate return on investment (ROI) rather than the valuable, integral resource that they are.
That’s why our Marketing & Communications Group stepped up and hosted an interactive session: “Understanding and Demonstrating the Value of Your Library” during CILIP’s Members Fest in October. The response was great—135 people signed up, and 80 joined us live. We owe a huge thanks to everyone who showed up, shared their thoughts, and sparked such an important conversation.
In a marketised economy it’s no surprise that so many library workers attended: our jobs now include gathering metrics to demonstrate to budget holders that we’re worthwhile. Our context is one of public libraries being closed due to “budget issues” and passed over to volunteers, of under-resourced prison and museum libraries and of a financial crisis in the academic sector causing even more budget cuts, restructures and redundancies in school, college and university libraries. So it was both heartening and upsetting to see how our attendees responded to our first question: “What do you think that people think about your library?
Hope and fears – what libraries think their community thinks of them
When we asked about perceptions of libraries, two stories emerged. The answers really hit home. There’s so much hope—that libraries are seen as safe, inclusive and trusted spaces. But there’s also fear—libraries being misunderstood, undervalued, and ignored.
Hopes
SOURCE: Output from the CILIP Marketing and Communications Group workshop “Understanding and Demonstrating the Value of Your Library”, 15 October 2024
What the library community fears people think of them
The fear is grounded in reality. But libraries aren’t just surviving—they’re fighting back. They’re gathering data, aligning with stakeholders, and proving, day by day, that libraries are essential. Sharing lessons learned across the library community helps not only upskill people but also learn from mistakes, save time, discover new ways of doing things, and validate what we are already doing.
Fears
Now we’ll build on those responses, exploring how we can all step up, show our impact, and make our voices heard, with examples from the library community.
How to measure your impact
If you can’t measure it, you can’t defend it. That’s why we had so many great examples of how to showcase your library’s impact. Here’s how you can make the invisible, visible:
Metrics
Data matters. From SCONUL stats to usage figures, every number tells a story. Gather it, analyse it, and use it.
Impact analysis
Numbers are great, but stories stick. How does your library change lives, support research, or build community? Find those stories and share them.
- Analyze citations in faculty publications
- Record research outputs (e.g. publications and data)
- Collection impact
- Real-world impact
- Enhancing DEIA initiatives
- Library impact studies
- Accreditation and compliance support
- Cross-checking bibliographies against OPAC
- Analyze citations in faculty publications
- Being nominated for a staff team award
- Modelling faith values in how the librarian serves members
- Potentially, donations, particularly for community-managed libraries
- Promote library projects through lessons learned
- Looking for organisation-wide events and getting ourselves onto the programmes
Alignment
Connect your work to bigger goals. Show how your library aligns with institutional or community priorities—it’s not just about what you do but why it matters.
- Institutional goals
- Positioning
- Messaging
- Involvement in meetings and strategic discussions
- Accreditation
- Compliance
Feedback
Ask your users. What do they value? What do they need? Their voices can be your most powerful ally.
- User feedback
- Surveys and polls
- Areas of improvement
- Online listening
- Case studies and testimonials
- Lessons learned from peers
- Successes
- Discussions /conversations re displays and exhibitions
- Collect thank yous
- Identify emails that could turn into good feedback/impact stories and follow up
- Competition for student ideas to improve Library – qualitative feedback
Support services
Your library is more than resources. Highlight everything you offer—workshops, IT help, research support—to show how you change lives and make a difference.
- Funding applications
- Research project
- Literacy and education development
- Listening ears
- Wide range of workshops offered
People
Libraries are built on people—staff who care, listen, and make a difference. Tell their stories and let their passion shine through.
- Outreach activities
- Meetings held using library facilities
- Interactions with different groups
- Community outreach
- Promotion to staff on teams
- Interactions with different groups
Industry successes and community lessons
As a regular visitor to Coventry’s Central Library, I love seeing that it’s consistently busy with a range of people – from kids with their carers in the children’s section to teens studying, to me, a person availing themselves of their excellent new book selection. And always a group of older men, reading print newspapers and chatting. In what other space can you find such a disparate group of people, peacefully pursuing their own interests alongside each other – for free? That’s what makes libraries special. And telling stories like this – communicating with stakeholders and sharing the everyday importance of your library – helps show the real human impact we have. Share your wins and inspire others to do the same. Our participants did so, discover the successes and lessons they shared.
Successes
- Delve deeper into metrics and answer specific questions, e.g. proportion of use of content – not absolute numbers, especially as user numbers drop.
- Record statistics on assisted digital support segmented by Household Support Fund vouchers, Blue Badges, bus passes, etc.
- Identify the knock-on and story behind the statistics—the new catalogue system means less time spent cataloguing and more time progressing other projects. Quantify if you can, as shorter statistics make a bigger impact in conversations with senior management.
- Invite feedback and hold competitions with different stakeholder groups, such as the student union and the Pro-vice Chancellor Student Experience improvement.
- Ensure user groups are represented across your organisation.
- Apply and achieve accreditation, e.g. Customer Service Excellence accreditation.
- Focus on individual stories, e.g. a single Mum who used a library PC to help her business grow.
- Review processes and focus library resources to make the biggest impact with minimal resources while remaining open and relevant.
- Make the library more visible, e.g. use cross-curricular work to build relationships with teaching staff and other departments.
- Use social media in a fun and engaging way, e.g. #BookTok.
- Create a thank you campaign at the end of the year and create resources like an infographic.
- Hire out space for meetings, training and events that can generate additional income and can be noisy if they want to be.
- Make user groups more diverse.
- Improve personalisation and targeting with marketing.
- Revisit training resources created and shared across an organisation.
- Make sure someone from the library is represented in organisational projects and a valued voice in steering groups.
- Get involved in institutional events.
- Attend external events and present.
- Get involved in committees and expand your network and reach.
- Engage with stakeholders outside the library to generate more insights.
- Run open days and engaging events.
- Gather great feedback and testimonials from different stakeholder groups that tells a story.
- Segment user groups and have a strategy for each. For example, work with older year students about further reading to increase loans, run clubs to encourage reading, and build a good relationship with the Student Union.
- Apply for internal and external awards to recognise achievements, which helps with morale and recognition. A good place to start is our Marketing Excellence Awards! Look outside the usual library awards, too, e.g. technology.
- Apply for funding, such as diversity, equity, inclusivity, and accessibility (DEIA) funding, to start small well-being connections.
- Build relationships with other campuses and libraries.
- Use the library as a safe and relaxing space to support mental health and well-being and run initiatives to support it.
- Align reporting to overarching institutional goals and mission – e.g. open access, citations and metrics for QS rankings, and data management.
- Simple dashboard reporting key metrics, e.g. usage per unique/individual educator, researcher, and student to calculate percentage per total FTE.
Lessons learned
- Start with small achievable steps to keep up motivation and morale.
- Use tools like Hayzine to improve how key data is represented and shared. A visually compelling story is more likely to attract and keep attention.
- Make better use of empty space to get stakeholders in the library.
- Senior leadership is not coming to the library? Make space to hold meetings there so they physically experience your value.
- Use accreditation to demonstrate ‘usual’ is ‘excellence’.
- Get others to demonstrate your success, build relationships with your champions and get them to shout out about you. Others can be very influential.
- Loan numbers drop when students drop, demonstrate the consequence of factors outside your control. Show the impact that others have on you and your team.
- Name drop own staff to senior leadership to acknowledge deserved recognition.
- Support teaching staff with technology to deliver teaching, as well as assistive tech for learners.
- Connect with your Communications team to see what stories they are looking for and help them share them publicly.
- Demonstrate support for the well-being of staff and stakeholders.
- Be bold and self-publicise.
- Describe the resources required and what would be achieved with more resources to make a bigger impact.
- Get involved with the senior leadership team in challenging times – they want you to succeed and are there to help.
- Be proactive to get feedback and insights – don’t wait for it to come to you.
- Try new ways to present and communicate information to drive better impact.
Summary and next steps
Why not join our CILIP Marketing and Communications Group as a member, or better yet, join our committee and help us improve the impact of libraries? We offer an annual Research Bursary of £750 to develop marketing capability and experience amongst a library individual or team staff in the UK, and our annual Marketing Excellence Awards recognises and celebrates marketing successes, big and small, across all library sectors. Contact chair.mcg@cilip.org.uk for more information.
Libraries matter. They change lives. They empower communities. But their value isn’t self-evident—it’s up to us to show it. The ideas shared in this workshop are just the beginning. Together, we can gather data, tell compelling stories, and make an undeniable case for libraries.
To everyone who joined us, thank you. Let’s keep pushing forward. Stay connected, share your successes, and join us for future events. Together, we’ll make sure libraries not only survive but thrive.
The future of libraries starts with us. Let’s make it happen.
Michelle Bond is Academic Liason Librarian at Coventry University and Chair of CILIP Marketing & Communications Group; Lou Peck is CEO at The International Bunch and Digital Officer of CILIP Marketing & Communications Group