EMedien in Deutschland: Benutzung, Statistiken, Zukunft

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Ten years after Measuring Quality revised
Roswitha Poll Münster, Germany
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MeasuringQuality

• 1st edition 1996
• English, German, French, Russian, Italian
• only academic libraries
• 17 indicators

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MeasuringQuality

• 2nd revised edition 2007
• academic and public libraries
• 40 indicators
• Authors Peter te Boekhorst, Roswitha Poll

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MeasuringQuality Why?

• So what are you doing at the moment?Writing a
  book about performance indicators for libraries
• Whats that, performance indicators? Methods for
  seeing whether the library is good
• And how do you know whether you are good? By
  asking users, by measuring whether we are doing
  things right
• For example? That all the books are always in
  their right place
• Yes, thats important. And such things show you
  whether you are good?Well, not quite, but I can
  compare with other libraries
• And if they are worse, you know that you are
  good?Thats about it

Okay, sounds easy But why do you need a book for
that?
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Changes in the library world

• electronic services predominant
• the teaching library as new role
• cost-effectiveness crucial
• competition of the institutions
• library as physical place widens to meeting
  and communication

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Trends in performance measurement

• stakeholders views
• quantitative and qualitative measures
• standardisation has proceeded - ISO 11620 will
  comprise e-measures
• user surveys find broad acceptance
• impact/outcome measures

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More use of performance measures?

• More data available
• For electronic services - resources-
  expenditure- usage
• In national statistics- reference transactions-
  data for library space- attendances at user
  training and events

• But
• Visits still only
• physical visits
• Digitisation missing

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More use of performance measures?

• Joint benchmarking projects

• BIX Library IndexGerman public and academic
  libraries
• CASL (Council of Australian State
  Libraries)public libraries
• Swedish Quality Handbookall types of libraries
• HELMS (UK Higher Education Library Management
  Statistics) academic libraries
• Netherlands University Libraries

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More use of performance measures?

• Joint benchmarking projects

• Projects 5
• Indicators 55
• Corresponding to ISO 11620 25
• Used in more than one project 20

Individuality obvious
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More use of performance measures?

• Interactive national statistics allow
  combinations of data (e.g. per capita)
• Less reports from individual libraries
• But service level agreements with
  performance indicators on websites
• Performance measures have been integrated

Time to re-shelve 100 in 6 hours
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The handbookstructure

• Balanced Scorecard
• chapter on impact/outcome
• bibliography for each indicator
• examples for possible scores

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The handbookHow to choose indicators

• The set of indicators should
• cover the full range of library services
• consider traditional and electronic services
• if possible merged indicators
• include indicators for potentials and
  development
• consider the view of different stakeholders

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Library qualityStakeholder views

• Users
• Access to information worlwide
• Delivery of information to the desktop
• Speed and accuracy of delivery
• Good in-library working conditions
• Responsiveness of staff
• Reliability of services

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Library qualityStakeholder views

• Financing authorities
• Cost-effectiveness
• Clear planning, effective organisation
• Positive outcome on users
• Benefits for the institutions goals
• Effective cooperation
• High reputation of the library

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Library qualityStakeholder views

• Staff
• Good working conditions
• Clear planning, straight processes
• Systematic staff development
• High reputation of the library

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The handbookHow to choose indicators

• Only one indicator for one question?
• Example How intensively is the collection used?
• Indicators
• collection turnover
• loans per capita
• percentage of stock not used
• Each indicator gives a different picture and
  might serve different purposes of the evaluating
  library

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The indicatorsA. Resources, infrastructure What
does the library offer?
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Opening hours compared to demand

• DefinitionThe actual number and time of opening
  hours compared to opening hours as desired by
  users
• Method Survey
• Possible formula A/B A the number of
  present opening hours
• B the number of hours which the users state
  that they need (present hours additional hours)
• If a library opens 60 hours per week and in
  the survey users ask for 10 hours more, the score
  would be 6070 0.86

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Immediate availability

• DefinitionThe percentage of immediate loans of
  total loans
• MethodImmediate loans loans minus
  reservationsTotal loans loans plus ILL loans
  received
• Question The probability that a users loan
  request will be fulfilled immediately

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Direct access from the homepage

• DefinitionThe availability of the most
  frequently used resources and services via the
  homepage of the librarys website, measured by
  the number of clicks necessary and the
  comprehensibility of the terms used
• MethodCognitive walk-through A small group of
  experts simulates user behaviour
• QuestionWhether the homepage leads directly or
  very quickly to the most frequently needed
  information

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Direct access from the homepage
Academic libraries

• Reference
• Databases
• E-journals
• Subject access
• User training
• News, events

• Address
• Way to the library
• Opening times
• Online catalogue
• Lending service
• User card
• User account
• ILL/document delivery

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Direct access from the homepage
Public libraries

• Link collection
• Reference
• Fees
• Services for children
• Branch libraries
• Community services
• News, events

• Address
• Way to the library
• Opening times
• Online catalogue
• Lending service
• User card
• User account
• Electronic collection

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Access via the homepage
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The indicatorsB. Use How are the services
accepted?
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Library visits per capita

• DefinitionThe total number of library visits per
  year, either physical or virtual, by members of
  the population, divided by the number of persons
  in the population
• MethodPhysical visits turnstileVirtual visits
  

• web browser visits
• IP visits
• homepage visits

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Library visits per capitaA method for counting
homepage visits

• Counting the deliveries of a Transparent GIF
• placed on the home page for counting
  purposes
• The number of deliveries of the pixel is
  identical
• to the number of page deliveries.
• The advantage of this method is that it easy to
  use.
• The disadvantage is that access to other pages
• is not counted.

German Benchmarking Project BIX
http//www.bix-bibliotheksindex.de/
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The indicatorsC. Efficiency Are the services
offered cost-effectively?
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Cost per use

• DefinitionThe total operating or recurrent
  expenditure of the library during the reporting
  year divided by the number of loans in-house
  use downloads from the electronic collection
• Methodloans lending systemin-house use
  samplingdownloads suppliers and library
  servers
• Question The indicator assesses the library
  costs per case of collection use and therewith
  the cost-efficiency of library services

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The indicatorsD. Potentials and development Is
the library fit for future?
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Attendances at training lessons per staff member

• DefinitionThe number of attendance hours of
  staff members at formal training lessons during
  one year divided by the total number of library
  staff
• Method- number of attendants at each training-
  duration of a trainingA training of 3 hours with
  12 attendants would be 36 attendance hours.
• Question What priority does the library give
  to staff training and therewith to the librarys
  ability to cope with development?

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Staff training What has been counted?

• Hours of training per staff member
• Days of training per staff member (hours
  calculated in days)
• Percentage of staff members who received training
  during the year
• Number of training lessons per staff member
• Training hours as percentage of total staff
  working hours
• Expenditure for staff training

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Measuring Quality What we tried to do
new indicators
indicators for all services
merged indicators
find the ultimate set of measures ??
practical examples for each indicator
bibliography for each indicator
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It is difficult to catch a black cat in a dark
room especially when it is not there
Chinese Proverb