PUB TYPE Reports Research/Technical (143) Tests /Evaluation Instruments (160)

This is the final technical report (in three parts) of a 15-month long project to study the costs and value of library functions at five major research libraries. Twenty-one services or service aspects were studied, and numerous measures of the importance. or benefit of the service to the users were made. These measures were studied together to lay a foundation for the development of an economically valid scale for assessing the impact of library services. More than 500 interviews were transcribed, and an empirical taxonomy was developed for classifying the contexts and the value to users of library services. Finally, the principles of data envelopment analysis have been adapted to this situation and illustrated using representative measures of library impact. This study has established not only the characteristics of the numerous services studied, but also the fact that a single uniform instrument can be applied to study many diverse services at many libraries