Viewing Library Metrics from Different Perspectives: Inputs, Outputs, and Outcomes

(Paperback)

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Description

This guidebook shows academic libraries how to use innovative new performance metrics to achieve greater accountability and higher levels of service. Viewing Library Metrics from Different Perspectives: Inputs, Outputs, and Outcomes helps academic librarians go well beyond the basic guideposts of inputs and outputs to explore a wide range of metrics for measuring their effectiveness and improving performance. Based on their groundbreaking article, "Outcomes Assessment: Not Synonymous with Inputs and Outputs," Robert Dugan and Peter Hernon, along with coauthor Danuta Nitecki, give libraries the tools they need to see beyond their own walls and interpret both outcome and impact metrics from the perspective of the parent institution, the customer, and the stakeholder, as well as the library itself. Viewing Library Metrics from Different Perspectives makes a convincing argument for targeting the right audience with the right metric. The first three chapters introduce key concepts and the relevant literature, and helps libraries make the crucial distinction between assessment and evaluation. Chapters four through nine examine the four perspectives and their attendant metrics. The final chapters discuss how best to present and interpret the results.

Reviews

Dugan (Sawyer Library, Suffolk U., Ashburton, Massachusetts), Hernon (library and information science, Simmons College, Boston, Massachusetts), and Nitecki's (Sterling Memorial Library, Yale U., Connecticut) text offers academic librarians a wide range of metrics for measuring library effectiveness and improving performance. Coverage includes key concepts and the relevant supporting literature; differentiating between assessment and evaluation; the perspectives of the library itself and of the parent institution, the customer, and the stakeholder; benchmarking and best practices; metrics for marketing and public relations; management information systems; and presenting, interpreting, and displaying metrics. Multiple appendices summarize the text and illustrate numerous metrics applicable to libraries. For academic and public library managers, graduate students in library and information science, the stakeholders served by libraries, and vendors supplying use data to libraries and consortia. * Reference & Research Book News *
This book is highly recommended. . . . It will be useful to library administrators and other decision makers choosing metrics to meet institutional demands for accountability, affordability, transparency, and student learning outcomes. . . . This book is recommended for academic libraries, public libraries, research libraries, consortia, and organizations that aim to provide quality information services. * Collection Management *
In this useful book, Dugan, Hernon and Nitecki offer colleagues an overview of the purpose and forms of metrics in libraries.Although particularly relevant to academic librarians, this book should prove very valuable to individuals in any type of library. * The Journal of Academic Librarianship *
Viewing Library Metrics from Different Perspectives is well worth the effort to acclimate to a brave new library language. Thus the authors succeed in making a convincing case for the merit of metrics in the administration of libraries. * College & Research Libraries *

Author Bio

Robert E. Dugan is director of Sawyer Library at Suffolk University, Boston, MA. Peter Hernon is professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College, Boston, MA. Danuta A. Nitecki is dean of libraries and professor at College of Information Science & Technology at Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA.