Today I was drawn to the papers and presentations on library value and return on investment (ROI). This is the way administration and your bosses think. I personally think librarians have too long relied on the "touchy, feely" intrinsic value of libraries rather than the cold hard cash value of libraries. In other words I think we as a profession are still stuck trying to prove that we are needed to our administrators with anecdotal stories of our worth and that it is important to have a library because, "we have always had a library." I don't think it is a medical librarian thing, I think ALL librarians typically have fallen prey to this thinking and justification process. Perhaps it is because we are not taught business principles in librarianship, or many of our library students typically come from arts and science degree backgrounds not business degrees. Perhaps it goes a little deeper than that, maybe we have been so used to providing "free" services to all who seek it, that we have gotten accustomed to doing so and the very idea of attaching value and dollar figures to our products and services seems counter to our culture. (I tend to think this theory is particularly true within public libraries.)


Regardless of how we got this way, the fact is we did. We just can't seem (or want) to put a dollar amount on the services and resources we provide our users. In the case of medical libraries this is a great disservice because our hospital administrator do put a dollar amount on us and unfortunately it is usually how much are we costing the library. How much money are they "throwing out the window" to buy some books when everything is free or at least cheaper on the Internet.


So that is why I was drawn to the Bridging the Gap paper presentation as well as the paper "A Calculator for Measuring the Impact of Health Sciences Libraries and Librarians."
Full Abstract: http://tinyurl.com/6yble3

Librarian have usually have relied on circulation statistics, gate counts, reference questions and anecdotal evidence as support for budget requests or to fight budget cutbacks. The librarian created three calculators; one that can calculate the value of the library (collections, resources, services), a second that calculates the cost/benefit ratio (CBA, a number familiar with finance professionals), and a third that calculates the return on investment (ROI).

These are very helpful calculators. Personally, I think every hospital librarian should be making use of these resources to help justify budget increases and try to prevent budget cutbacks.

Labels: MLA2008, ROI