Stories Not Statistics: An Autoethnographical & Narrative Exploration of the Value of Public Libraries

This presentation will focus on two of the conference subthemes: research methods for untold stories, and the researcher and the untold story. Background: the current tools used to measure the value of public libraries are largely grounded in methods that focus on numbers, downloads, and foot traffic – metrics that do not fully capture and express the true social value and potential of public library services. This Masters dissertation study, focused on the United Kingdom public library service, used autoethnography, thematic content analysis, and narrative enquiry. There are also reflections on the researcher’s untold story, and their role within an autoethnographical context as both the researcher and the researched.