Niels Ole Pors, Library Link Regional Convenor - Europe

We have this year witnessed a heated debate in the Danish public library sector about indicators of effectiveness and efficiency.

The background is rather interesting. The Danish Ministry of Finance publish every year a critical review of some of the public services. (Budgetredeg�relse 97, Finansministeriet. Maj 1997)

This year they included the public library sector in their annual review. The review was based on the annual published library statistics. The statistical figures included in this annual library statistics are the well - known overall indicators like budget figures, circulation figures, circulation pro habitant and so on.

The Ministry of Finance took some of these overall figures a step further and used them to rank the public libraries in different categories.

What the Ministry of Finance did was simply to calculate the following figures:

The number of issues pr 100 Dkr
The number of acquisitions pr habitant

On the basis of these two rather simple indicators the public libraries in Denmark was grouped in 4 categories:

1. Few acquisitions and expensive issues
   
2. Few acquisitions and inexpensive issues
   
3. Many acquisitions and expensive issues
   
4. Many acquisitions and inexpensive issues
   

The short report from the Ministry of Finance ranked the public libraries according to the above mentioned criteria of effectiveness.

The 30 most effective libraries were mentioned by name.

10 of these 30 libraries were selected for an interview - investigation. The objective of this further investigation was to cast light on factors that help create effective public library systems.

Some of the factors discovered were:

Goal - oriented adaptation of supply in relation to demand through frequent user studies

• Adaptation of opening hours in relation to users needs
  
• Quick circulation of materials
  
• Price oriented acquisitions
  
• Economic cut downs includes both staff and materials
  
• Clear form of organisation and visible management
  

Of course the publication started a heated discussion. And of course it is very problematic to use statistical figures like that to compare libraries with very different service profiles.

As a matter of fact it indicated a more general problem in the library sector. Despite a rather huge literature about and quite a lot of studies into performance measurement and performance indicators most public libraries have not adapted them in a systematic way, including agreements with the political authorities about these measures. They would of course have been a defence against this kind of evaluation. And they would have given the single library a much better instrument for planning and measuring how objectives are meet.

It would be nice to get some information and opinions about the state of performance measurement in different libraries.

Back to Finance Viewpoints