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

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.

• Offers a complementary, continually updated website that lets readers work hands-on with different metrics

• Includes a wide-ranging bibliography that goes beyond library and information science

• Provides appendices that summarize the text and illustrate the numerous metrics that are relevant to libraries

• Includes a comprehensive index that draws together diverse literature and terminology