Purpose: To demonstrate the importance of impact / outcome research in libraries Design/methodology/approach: The paper gives an overview of purposes and methods used in impact research and illustrates this through project experiences. Findings: Various projects worldwide are trying to prove that use of library services can positively influence skills and competences, attitudes and behaviour of users. The benefits that users experience by using library services can be assessed in terms of knowledge gained, higher information literacy, higher academic or professional success, social inclusion, and increase in individual well-being. Research limitations/implications:The main problem of impact research is, that influences on an individual are manifold and that therefore it is difficult to trace changes and improvements back to the library. The paper shows methods that are tested and used at the present. More investigation is needed to identify methods that could be used to show a library's overall impact or to develop measures that would permit benchmarking between institutions. Practical implications: The paper shows practical examples of impact assessment, covering "soft" methods like surveys, interviews, focus groups, observation and quantitative methods like tests, analysis of publications, or usage data. Originality/value: The paper acquaints libraries with a topic that is not yet well known and, by showing practical examples, demonstrates how libraries can attempt to assess their impact.
Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to deal with actually available and potential methods for identifying, verifying and quantifying the influence of libraries on individuals and society. Design/methodology/approach -The paper gives an overview of methods and procedures that have been used for demonstrating the social, educational or economic impact of libraries. It points to validity problems and to labor costs of specified procedures and shows examples of simple methods that might be applied by most libraries. Findings -Various projects worldwide have tried to develop and test such methods, and the discussion has reached a stage where a first aggregation in an International Standard seems possible and expedient. ISO therefore started a working group in December 2010. Originality/value -This is the first report concerning ISO 16439. GeneralTraditionally, libraries collect and present at least basic data about the input into their services (funding, staff, collections, space, equipment) and the output of those services (loans, visits, downloads, reference transactions, etc.). Such statistics are usually collected in the individual library and are more or less regularly summed up to regional or national statistics. Definitions and collecting procedures have been formalised and are described in the ISO Standard 2789 (International Library Statistics; ISO 2789ISO , 2006.In addition to such quantitative counts, libraries have also developed measures for assessing the quality of their services and the cost-efficiency of their service delivery. Such quality indicators or performance indicators are described in the ISO Standard 11620 (library performance indicators; ISO 11620, 2008).In recent years, libraries like other non-profit organisations are expected to prove their value. For libraries, such value has traditionally been accepted as self-evident. However, today all information "seems" to be available via the internet, and information seeking often bypasses library catalogues and collections. Based on such misconception, the benefits available via the use of library services are questioned, especially by funding institutions. Libraries have responded to this situation and have developed and tested methods for identifying and proving their value for individual users and society.The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
Abstract:Libraries are collecting scores of data about their collection, services, use, and costs and about the quality of their services and products. In order to evaluate and utilize these data for the management process, a systematic approach is needed. A German project, sponsored by the German Research Council, uses the Balanced Scorecard as concept for an integrated quality management. Performance indicators across four equally significant perspectives -users, finances, internal processes, and potentials (innovation) -are combined to produce a "balanced" evaluation of the library. The data in the controlling systemTraditionally, libraries have collected statistical data about their collections, acquisitions, lending, and interlending activities. In time, these statistics were enlarged and differentiated, and in many cases now comprise several hundreds of separate data, ranging from the number of incunabula or microforms in the collection, expenditure on preservation or buildings to the number of issues, claims and reservations or the visits to exhibitions and special events. These statistics are in the most part collected nationally, but libraries tend to collect other statistics additionally, e. g. for special tasks and activities like legal deposit right, special collections, or services for special user groups.All those statistical data could be used as steering instruments for library management, but more often than not such use is rather accidental than systematical, and many data are collected laboriously without ever being evaluated.
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