David Streatfield

My consultancy work is guided by a throwaway comment made by an Irish banker (shortly before the international financial meltdown): “The trouble with planning is that it has to degenerate into action”.

David Streatfield has been involved with impact evaluation for more than thirty years.

He is Principal of Information Management Associates a consultancy, training and research team focused on evaluating information and library service provision and particularly on assessing the impact of these services. He has conducted impact evaluation consultancy work for the International Development Research Centre, IREX and the US Public Library Association as well as facilitating a two year university library self-evaluation programme (involving 22 UK university library teams). He is currently leading the programme evaluation for the IFLA International Advocacy programme and last December completed a ten-year spell as Independent Impact Consultant to the Global Libraries Initiative of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

His work with Global Libraries has included supporting impact development in Brazil, Colombia, Jamaica, South Africa and Turkey, as well various countries in Eastern Europe and South Asia. He helped to manage the Cross-Europe survey of public perceptions of public libraries in 17 European Union countries; and edited two special issues of the journal Performance Measurement and Metrics devoted to impact evaluation work in Global Libraries countries. With his partner, Sharon Markless, David has distilled much of this experience into a new edition of their book, Evaluating the impact of Your Library published in the UK and USA by Facet Publishing in 2013 and they are currently working on a new book of case studies in library impact evaluation.