Despite consistent usage, 21st century libraries are regularly under pressure to defend and justify their existence to various entities, including administrators, policy makers, legislators, and community citizens. One predominant tactic is to develop quantifiable measures that communicate library value, such as return on investment calculators that demonstrate savings achieved through the use of library collections and services. However, many of these value calculations only consider resources and collections, rather than the labor needed to make those resources accessible. This project uses a critical design approach to investigate ways to communicate the value of professional librarian labor. We created an interactive, web-based tool that calculates and concretely quantifies the financial value of librarian labor to expose the previously invisible yet important work of librarians, critique the status quo of libraries as resource collections, and offer a new way for libraries to advocate for support.
Visit the live calculator at http://truevalue.ischool.syr.edu
Read more about the project at the above website or in the following publications:
- Clarke, R.I., *Grimm, A., *Zhang, B., & *Stanton, K.L. (2023). “Time, Tasks, and Toll: Changes in Library Work During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Journal of Library Administration 63(4), 421-445. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01930826.2023.2201717
- Clarke, R.I., *Stanton, K.L., *Grimm, A., & *Zhang, B. (2022). “Invisible Labor, Invisible Value: Unpacking Traditional Assessment of Academic Library Value.” College & Research Libraries 83(6), 926-945. https://crl.acrl.org/index.php/crl/article/view/25683/33594
- Clarke, R. I., *Grimm, A., *Zhang, B., & *Stanton, K.L., (2022). “Work Made Visible.” Invited contribution for American Libraries, January/February 2022. https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2022/01/03/work-made-visible/
- Clarke, R. I., *Stanton, K.L., *Grimm, A. & *Zhang, B. (2021). “Calculating the True Value of Library Labor.” Invited contribution for Library Journal, August 19. https://www.libraryjournal.com/?detailStory=Calculating-the-True-Value-of-Library-Labor-Peer-to-Peer-Review
- Granger, S. (2021). “Rendre visible la valeur du travail en bibliothèque publique avec le true value calculator: Entretien avec Rachel Ivy Clarke, Katerina Lynn Stanton, Alexandra Grimm et Bo Zhang.” Le Bulletin des bibliothèques de France (BBF) 2021-2: Enjeux informationnels: la bibliothèque sans filtres ? https://bbf.enssib.fr/consulter/BBF-2021-2_3_Clarke-and-co.pdf
- Clarke, R. I., *Stanton, K.L., *Grimm, A. & *Zhang, B. (2021). “True Value: Calculating and Communicating the Value of Library Labor.” Presented at the Association for Library and Information Science Education conference, online, September 21-23. https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/items/118743
- *Stanton, K.L., *Grimm, A., *Zhang, B. & Clarke, R. I. (2021). “Rarely Acknowledged and Often Unrecognized: Exploring Emotional Labor Across Library Work Tasks.” Presented at the Association for Library and Information Science Education conference, online, September 21-23. https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/items/118735
Thank you to Katerina Stanton Balazs, Alexandra Grimm, and Bo Zhang for their collaborative assistance with this work.
This project was funded by the Collaboration for Unprecedented Success and Excellence (CUSE) Grant Program at Syracuse University (2019-2021).