The Central Library and the 72 branches of the Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL) serve the largest population of any public library system in the country. The library operates a range of community impact programs to help Angelenos with school and career, financial planning, health education, homeless and veterans’ affairs, and the immigration process.

FUSE Executive Fellow Donna Michelle Anderson helped LAPL develop data-driven systems for managing, implementing, and assessing this wide variety of programming in order to maximize impact. Under her leadership, the library developed new web experiences for e-media, as well as homeless and mental-health services. She also helped move paper processes to a digital platform, and she helped departments adopt an action plan approach to launching new projects or fixing existing processes, creating a new way of working throughout the department.