Monitoring means keeping records of different resource centre activities. Evaluation means using these records and other information, such as user surveys and focus group discussions, to review performance at set intervals and identify ways to improve the resource centre and its services.
Evaluating resource centre activities enables the parent organisation or donors to know how useful the activities are. Donors usually expect to receive an evaluation report at set intervals, such as every three years or at the end of a project or programme phase. Parent organisations should also receive evaluation results, to demonstrate how well the resource centre is helping the organisation to fulfil its mission.
Evaluations can vary greatly in scale and style. An evaluation might cover the whole range of resource centre activities, or it might focus on an individual activity, such as the enquiry service. The evaluation process - analysing data, drawing conclusions and making recommendations - might take more than a week or it might take less than a day.
Collecting and analysing data might involve an outside evaluator, such as a representative of a donor agency, and/or the evaluation might be a ‘participatory evaluation’ involving resource centre staff and users. Participatory evaluation provides an excellent opportunity for staff to learn from their experiences and contribute to the continuing development of the resource centre.
Evaluation requires a combination of ‘quantitative’ and ‘qualitative’ data:
- Quantitative data is data that can be measured, such as the number of visitors, the number of written and telephone enquiries, the number of searches carried out by staff, the number of subjects requested, or the number of sources used to provide information requested. Quantitative data is collected through monitoring (see Section 9.2).
- Qualitative data is data that cannot be measured, such as users’ opinions about the resource centre, and how they have used information obtained from the resource centre. Qualitative data is collected through questionnaires, interviews and focus group discussions (see Section 9.3).
