What Counts

To count (verb): to tally, to add up, to total, to recite numerals in ascending order

To count (verb) : to matter, to be considered, to be included, to have importance

I have posted multiple times in this space about metrics – the challenges and the seemingly arbitrary decisions we make when quantifying the libraries’ work for surveys like ARL, IPEDS, AASHL and ACRL.  Given my ambivalent feelings about counting, I appreciated a recent Curious Minds interview with Deborah Stone about her book, Counting. A social scientist, Stone reminds us: 

There is no such thing as a raw number.  At least in human affairs. Every number is the result of a decision about what is important; what is worth paying attention to.

Stone’s book is an exploration of the ways this plays out in the social world, with vivid examples of how seemingly precise figures for “unemployment” and “ethnicity” are replete with value judgements, arbitrary decision making, and historically based judgement about what is countable and how.  

Counting forces us to classify things, to categorize them. Because being countable is a value statement, counting is a way to exert power. We are familiar with how this impacts voting and in census-taking. To be “accountable” is to take responsibility for counting that is fair and honest.   

Libraries are big counters, and hence classifiers, asking “Is this a reference question or a directional question?” The former counts, the latter does not, at least as far as the NISO (our information standards organization) has dictated.   Asking a library staff person an “informational” question counts, but receiving help to find a book on the shelf or assistance with placing an item on reserve, those transactions are not counted as reference.  Reference transactions, that special kind of service,  are valued in a different way. 

Yet, isn’t the service of helping a patron to access resources on their own at least as much value as that transaction that provides the answer? It seems that helping a community user log on to a computer in order to apply for a job should count for something. Our standard surveys don’t ask about those transactions. What patrons ask of library staff is changing rapidly, as are the skills required to provide those services. 

The challenge is finding measures that truly gauge the value we provide to our communities. These metrics need to be applicable over time and relevant to libraries of many types. And measurable with systems (or less reliably, people) that apply them accurately and consistently. 

Stone’s final words remind us of the dangers of equating numbers with facts:

When we decide what to count, we frame an issue as surely as the painter composes a scene. Our numbers embody the concerns, priorities, and values that guide us as we decide who or what belongs in the categories we’re counting …We should count as if we’ll soon be infected by our own numbers. For in the end, what numbers do to others, they do to us as well. (Stone, D. Counting. New York: W.W. Norton, 2020)