Statewide Public Library Development Projects

Being The Best We Can is a service excellence framework created especially for Victorian public libraries to use in monitoring and assessing their services. It will recognise the specific requirements of the services delivered by public libraries – and the ways they can be delivered to support wider government policies. Libraries are great at measuring everything that is measurable (e.g. book loans and hours of internet usage). This project will help libraries to move beyond performance driven measurement and outputs to focus on purpose driven measures and outcomes. It will enable public libraries to demonstrate the impact they have on individuals and communities and how well their service meets users’ needs, and it will enable service improvements which further empower individuals and communities.

Being The Best We Can is a testament to the drive of the Victorian public library network and its willingness to learn from, and apply, international best practice.  The Framework is modelled on Building on Success: a public library quality improvement matrix for Scotland (http://www.slainte.org.uk/slic/plqim/toolkit.htm). Its development and implementation will involve working closely with Scottish colleagues, local continuous improvement experts and the Victorian public library network.

The key deliverables of the project are:

• The Being The Best We Can self-evaluation framework
• Training for public library managers in the Being the Best We Can process, especially in how to complete the self-evaluation framework
• External verification of the self-evaluation process and outcomes by peer reviewers for nine participating libraries
• Evaluation reports to individual libraries from the external verifier
• A consolidated report at the end of the project

Project timeline 

Being the Best We Can, Self-evaluation, Service Excellence, Continuous Improvement, Quality

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