Prepping for the EOY reports

Each year the librarians in my district create our EOY (end of year) reports.
We began creating this district-wide about 6 years ago.

• we are continually revising what we do to improve
• currently, each school fills in the document template, turns it in to the school principal and a lead librarian.  that lead librarian compiles info from all campuses into a master document, as well.
• a one-page document of the "highlights" is also turned into each principal 

Examples of the highlights page front/back (terrible pics, sorry!)

• a now-retired librarian created the original template and chose the particular strands to document from our state standards and guidelines document. These focus primarily on staffing and funding issues. I'm really not sure why other bits were not originally included.  
• These are ALSO used  as our 5 year plan per our standards and guidelines in our long document.
• as none of the programming/events were being highlighted in these documents, we have created a district library showcase each month.  Here is an example:

In an effort to keep moving forward, we looking for new innovative ways to share our EOY reports with our stakeholders.  The Texas standards and guidelines are about to be revised--the appointment of a steering committee is coming up in the next month.  With that said, we are not going to throw out the current document we use locally just yet as we really like that our EOY report is based on these standards.

Here are a few examples of great EOY reports that I'd like to share with my team.

• from the ever-amazing Sue Fitzgerald at The Unpretentious Librarian
• Jennifer LaGarde always has inspiration at The Adventures of Library Girl 
• this article by library super star Joyce Valenza has impact.
• this slideshare has some important points to remember, especially slide 14!
• Solon Community School District has an interesting magazine format. 

Questions to ponder:

1. How are we telling our story?
2. Who is our audience?  Do different audiences need different types of reports? 
3. Reflection is so important.  Is our current tool the best tool for this?
4. Admin is busy role. Most want concise, data-driven information
5. In decided what to include, should we look at the AASL guidelines more? Our district library evaluation tool? Our CIP?
6. What is the goal for this tool?  Perhaps when the new standards are in place, some of these questions will be easier to answer.
7. Currently the 5 year plan "required" by our standards actually only refers to "a 5-year strategy for planning, implementing, evaluating, and reporting the budget." Perhaps we should really consider 2 separate reports? Our current report does show growth over time, so that is very helpful. 
8. Joyce Valenza summed it up so well in her article referring to Jennifer LaGarde's words:I tried  to focus on data they would actually care about. (For example, instead of bemoaning the state of my 400s or shouting about the number of times A Diary of a Wimpy Kid was checked out, I focused on student impact, the relationship between library services and academic success and how our library meets the identified needs of students at our school).