Over the past couple of years, the National Library has been developing a framework for capturing and refining the impact of our digital services, supporting those impacts with qualitative, quantitative, and academic evidence, aligning them with strategic goals, and using them to better tell the story of our mahi. This framework is currently being put into practice in the form of an internally-developed Impact Hub.

In this presentation, Michael will share the lessons learned from this process, including but not limited to: the relational nature of impacts; the central importance of storytelling; ways that cultural memory organisations think about time; distinguishing between observation and analysis; and per the title, why "impact" is a terrible word for what we do.

Michael Lascarides is the User Experience Manager for the Digital Experience team at the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga, where he is charged with understanding current audiences, helping to ensure that they have the best possible experience, and identifying under-served audiences for future growth. Prior to joining NLNZ in 2013, Michael headed the web team at New York Public Library (in which capacity he first visited NDF) following many years as a designer, developer, and UX specialist for a wide variety of commercial clients. He lives in Ōtepoti Dunedin.