Meaningful stories are effective stories that entertain and / or persuade your audience.
These stories (including the most traditional and historical fairy tales) are usually based on some historical event or person from some point in history. So at the base of each story are some facts that are enhanced or augmented and blended with a little imagination from the storyteller to create a meaningful story (i.e. entertaining and / or persuading) to meet the storyteller's purpose. Thus, you need a mix of facts and imagination to make a meaningful story.
However, when an organization tells its meaningful story of what activities it performs and the impact or value that derives from these activities, it needs to very much be fact based with no enhancement, augmentation or imagination. Reporting impact and value are concrete concepts and the organization telling the story needs to use as many concrete facts as necessary to persuade the audience of the validity of the story being told. So where does the enhancement, augmentation, and imagination figure into this type of story?
The enhancement, augmentation or imagination in an organization's impact and value (i.e.meaningful) story process should come in the method of the telling of the story and not in the information used to create the story. Simply reciting a long list of facts is not a great story in itself. However, the organization can create an interest, appreciation, or trust of the story through a creative and imaginitive way of telling the concrete facts of the story.
For example, one library director I know from Florida bought giant pill bottles, filled them with their library's meaningful story (i.e. annual report), and provided it to their stakeholders as a "prescription for good community health and development". The annual report was written much like a prescription format and indicated that if the library was successful, and the user followed the use of the library as prescribed and evidenced in the report, the results would lead to a good, healthy community.
Unfortunately, according to a recent study of North Carolina academic and public libraries, the enhancement and augmentation components of a meaningful story are sometimes introduced into the process through accepting other perceptions or stories of events over reporting the concrete facts. In the study, many library administrators reported that when reporting the performance of their organization and in making certain types of strategic decisions, they frequently valued and used faculty / staff perceptions over other available types of more "concrete" evidence to make their decisions. Thus, concrete facts were sometimes replaced by less concrete evidence in the creating of the impact and value story, which could undermine the persuasiveness of the library's meaningful story in the telling.
So when you are creating your library's meaningful impact and value story, I would strongly suggest you stick to the concrete facts in the story and use your imagination in the creative way you tell the story to your audience. This mixture of fact and imagination will create the best meaningful story to entertain and persuade your audience of the library's impact and value.
