THE USE OF PUBLIC-LIBRARY ROLES FOR EFFECTIVENESS EVALUATION

This article examines the roles from the Public Library Association pl anning and measurement tools for their usefulness in evaluating public library effectiveness. It addresses four questions: What roles are ch osen most often?, Can we distinguish among libraries based on their ro le choices?, Do libraries with different role choices perform differen tly?, and, Can performance differences from an empirical basis for rol e definitions? Data for this study came from the Public Library Effect iveness Study (PLES), a survey of 2,418 stakeholders in 84 public libr aries nationwide. Respondents from the sampled libraries evidenced bot h uniformity and diversity in their choice of roles; the favorite role s were those historically associated with public libraries. The librar ies could be divided into one group serving smaller populations and fo cusing on the more popular roles and another serving larger population s and aspiring to fulfill a greater variety of roles. The cluster with a greater variety of roles also performed better than did the other g roup on more than half of the effectiveness indicators tested. This st udy has implications for future revisions in standardized role stateme nts and for future research linking performance to organizational goal s.