Multnomah County Library

PLAmetrics Case Study

Using PLAmetrics to Advantage

Multnomah County Library

Shani Fox, Administrative Analyst

Evidence-Based Management

Public libraries are increasingly employing PLAmetrics to support a wide variety of local operational and advocacy needs.

Multnomah County Library, OR

“We use PLAmetrics to review Multnomah County Library’s data, as well as compare MCL to our peer libraries — ten libraries from around the nation that we’ve identified as leaders in public library service, and that we track in terms of a variety of measures such as circulation, turnover, materials spending per capita, programming and reference per capita, open hours and staffing levels.

PLAmetrics is a cost-effective tool for this purpose and we like the easy online access to the data sets.”

About PLAmetrics

PLAmetrics is an online public library data management tool for employing historical and current PLDSPublic Library Data Service data for benchmarking, trend reports, analyses, etc. PLAmetrics also provides access to historical IMLSInstitute of Museum and Library Services data.

Note: 1,400+ public libraries across North America annually provide operational data.

The PLA supports PLAmetrics on behalf of its member libraries and retains Counting Opinions to manage the annual PLDSPublic Library Data Service data collection and the PLAmetrics data tool.

For more information and to subscribe, go to http://www.plametrics.org.

About Counting Opinions

Facing constant competitive challenges, libraries and library organizations need better tools to understand and manage customer needs and to compete more effectively for scarce resources. In business since 2004, Counting Opinions provides libraries and library organizations with a cost-effective, evidence-based management solutions’ platform for the comprehensive management of their performance and customer satisfaction data. Solutions for custom surveys, open-ended customer feedback, trends, benchmarking, outcomes and peer comparisons are also available.

Note: Interview conducted and case study prepared by Counting Opinions (SQUIREThe 6 key dimensions of service Satisfaction, Quality, re-Use, Importance, Recommendation, Expectation) Ltd..

Please cite this article as: Multnomah County Library; Shani Fox, Administrative Analyst