- Email: [email protected]
The productivity game
F
or several years, university administrators and their governing boards have been exploring, investigating, and assessing the blurred perceptions of faculty productivity. These ventures into the vagaries of quantifying academic measures of output effectiveness appear to have made few inroads into the ranks of librarians. Even where faculty status for librarians exists, there has been little interest shown to date. However, that fact does not preclude the same type of oversight from being applied to libraries. The financial incentives have been compromised by the steady decline in the budgetary support of academic libraries. With the typical academic library capturing less than 3 percent of a university’s operating budget, the savings to be reaped from shutting down a library operation would not cover the costs for the typical one-year increase in a university’s budget. With that fact of life as a reference point, the incentive to squeeze libraries for greater efficiencies would appear to be very low in the overall scheme of academic pursuits. With these factors in mind, it is less than encouraging to witness the continuing struggle that every library faces-pressure for more and more information sources in a world producing an increasing number and variety of those sources amidst a decreasing portion of the budget available to obtain those sources. Journals, books, electronic databases, and a host of new possibilities present new opportunities to offer one-stop shopping for the students and faculty members served by academic libraries; but a reality check in many academic libraries shows that the means to fulfill that potential is increasingly difficult to find. Does the productivity issue contain within it the wherewithal to create the library of the future within the budgetary constraints of the present? That is the question and the challenge levied in the administrative corridors of universities. Quantifying and measuring library performance is a matter garnering attention in many circles. Unlike the faculty productivity inquiries, however, librarians generally have not been placed in the position of being scrutinized for individual performance characteristics. Instead, the library is the entity that has to produce, or will have to produce in the evaluations of the future. Certainly, in research library circles, there are signs of movement to take different approaches in evaluating libraries. In the scientific discipline of chemistry, a stoichiometric analysis may be conducted wherein the total output from a system is calculated or measured against the input into the system. To conduct such an analysis on a library, it would mean that all Don 1. Bosseau PO Box 248214, edu>.
is Director of Libraries, Coral Gables, Florida
44
of Academic
The Journal
Librarianship,
University of Miami Library, 33 124
Volume
25, Number
1, pages 44-45
of the services provided, books circulated, databases searched, citations and full text accessed, and so on, would be assessed or balanced against the input into the system (i.e., the library). The input includes the library materials budget, gifts in kind, personnel resources, book purchases, database licensing fees, and so on. Of course, placing a time interval on these measures is not rigorously defensible since the measure of a library is dependent upon the cumulative effects of many years of input as well as the current efforts. Nevertheless, some elevated expectations for accountability appear to be making its way into the inner-sanctums of academic institutions. The old measure of quality predicated primarily on the count of volumes is losing support, especially at the administrative levels that determine the financial support for collections. A report from the Pew Higher Education Roundtable, co-sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries and the Association of American Universities, advocates a move away “from the mindset that accords status and prestige by the ‘tonnage model’ . ..” to some new means of benchmarking. While a model for achieving that new approach was not immediately forthcoming, it is further evidence that the times are changing. The library community would be well-served to provide leadership in this area. The Association of Research Libraries is addressing this challenge. Back to the productivity question-following that brief discussion of related issues-it can be demonstrated that librarians are more productive because of technology. Library staffs are more productive too. Certainly, it has been shown, in many contexts, that so-called automation does not usually save money, but it does offer the means by which the rate of increase in budgets can be reduced-while maintaining or even improving the level of services. However, some of those improvements are now becoming available without our mediation. Librarians used to conduct tens of thousands of dollars worth of database searches; but in most libraries, that figure has been reduced to a trickle within the last five years. Where does that type of precedent leave the profession? Vendors can now market directly to faculty and even students. “Value added’ may become the new raison d’etre that libraries point to in defending their claim to receiving a fair share of resources. Certainly, librarians are in the driver’s seat with respect to having the first hand knowledge about end users’ approaches to accessing information. Librarians are in the best position to develop the profiles and the enhancements that help faculty members and students stay in touch with their primary subject and/or language disciplines. Instruction in the use of databases and electronic journals, and in the more generic use of online resources through the Internet, has already become a
basic aspect of library service. Information competency or information literacy represents an area of concern to universities. There is an understanding that their graduates must leave with a reasonable level of understanding and skills about the processes by which one accesses information in the new digital environment. A semblance of self-sufficiency may not be an acceptable goal within the next five years. The measure of competency with which students emerge from a degree program will be predicated, in part, on their ability to find more information than that which got them through the degree program. Top law firms have, in recent years, made clear that one of the deficiencies of even their top-of-the-class recruits lies in their relatively inadequate preparation to conduct definitive research independently. Looking for the information in all the wrong places is not a humorous country-western song title at $250 per hour and up in the world of litigation and pay-perminute time clocks.
If librarians’ productivity, or a library’s performance, is measured by the level of skills shown by the ability of graduating students to compete in the real world of libraries, databases, and Web sites, then we need some guidelines. Nothing as simple as the number of FTE students per class, which has been a measure of quality that was once accepted for teaching workloads, will suffice. If quality of library service is to be embedded in the equation for performance evaluation, then some performance indicators must be developed. Standards? That may be premature for a field which is dealing with such a fast moving target; but certainly some kind of guidelines, measures, or clear-cut goals is needed. Will our professional associations help? Or, do we risk falling behind the curve by allowing legislatures and boards to come up with their own methodologies? Standardized high school achievement tests have been pushed at high political levels. We would do well to avoid the push-politics that creates this type of situation.
January 1999 45
or several years, university administrators and their governing boards have been exploring, investigating, and assessing the blurred perceptions of faculty productivity. These ventures into the vagaries of quantifying academic measures of output effectiveness appear to have made few inroads into the ranks of librarians. Even where faculty status for librarians exists, there has been little interest shown to date. However, that fact does not preclude the same type of oversight from being applied to libraries. The financial incentives have been compromised by the steady decline in the budgetary support of academic libraries. With the typical academic library capturing less than 3 percent of a university’s operating budget, the savings to be reaped from shutting down a library operation would not cover the costs for the typical one-year increase in a university’s budget. With that fact of life as a reference point, the incentive to squeeze libraries for greater efficiencies would appear to be very low in the overall scheme of academic pursuits. With these factors in mind, it is less than encouraging to witness the continuing struggle that every library faces-pressure for more and more information sources in a world producing an increasing number and variety of those sources amidst a decreasing portion of the budget available to obtain those sources. Journals, books, electronic databases, and a host of new possibilities present new opportunities to offer one-stop shopping for the students and faculty members served by academic libraries; but a reality check in many academic libraries shows that the means to fulfill that potential is increasingly difficult to find. Does the productivity issue contain within it the wherewithal to create the library of the future within the budgetary constraints of the present? That is the question and the challenge levied in the administrative corridors of universities. Quantifying and measuring library performance is a matter garnering attention in many circles. Unlike the faculty productivity inquiries, however, librarians generally have not been placed in the position of being scrutinized for individual performance characteristics. Instead, the library is the entity that has to produce, or will have to produce in the evaluations of the future. Certainly, in research library circles, there are signs of movement to take different approaches in evaluating libraries. In the scientific discipline of chemistry, a stoichiometric analysis may be conducted wherein the total output from a system is calculated or measured against the input into the system. To conduct such an analysis on a library, it would mean that all Don 1. Bosseau PO Box 248214, edu>.
is Director of Libraries, Coral Gables, Florida
44
of Academic
The Journal
Librarianship,
University of Miami Library, 33 124
Volume
25, Number
1, pages 44-45
of the services provided, books circulated, databases searched, citations and full text accessed, and so on, would be assessed or balanced against the input into the system (i.e., the library). The input includes the library materials budget, gifts in kind, personnel resources, book purchases, database licensing fees, and so on. Of course, placing a time interval on these measures is not rigorously defensible since the measure of a library is dependent upon the cumulative effects of many years of input as well as the current efforts. Nevertheless, some elevated expectations for accountability appear to be making its way into the inner-sanctums of academic institutions. The old measure of quality predicated primarily on the count of volumes is losing support, especially at the administrative levels that determine the financial support for collections. A report from the Pew Higher Education Roundtable, co-sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries and the Association of American Universities, advocates a move away “from the mindset that accords status and prestige by the ‘tonnage model’ . ..” to some new means of benchmarking. While a model for achieving that new approach was not immediately forthcoming, it is further evidence that the times are changing. The library community would be well-served to provide leadership in this area. The Association of Research Libraries is addressing this challenge. Back to the productivity question-following that brief discussion of related issues-it can be demonstrated that librarians are more productive because of technology. Library staffs are more productive too. Certainly, it has been shown, in many contexts, that so-called automation does not usually save money, but it does offer the means by which the rate of increase in budgets can be reduced-while maintaining or even improving the level of services. However, some of those improvements are now becoming available without our mediation. Librarians used to conduct tens of thousands of dollars worth of database searches; but in most libraries, that figure has been reduced to a trickle within the last five years. Where does that type of precedent leave the profession? Vendors can now market directly to faculty and even students. “Value added’ may become the new raison d’etre that libraries point to in defending their claim to receiving a fair share of resources. Certainly, librarians are in the driver’s seat with respect to having the first hand knowledge about end users’ approaches to accessing information. Librarians are in the best position to develop the profiles and the enhancements that help faculty members and students stay in touch with their primary subject and/or language disciplines. Instruction in the use of databases and electronic journals, and in the more generic use of online resources through the Internet, has already become a
basic aspect of library service. Information competency or information literacy represents an area of concern to universities. There is an understanding that their graduates must leave with a reasonable level of understanding and skills about the processes by which one accesses information in the new digital environment. A semblance of self-sufficiency may not be an acceptable goal within the next five years. The measure of competency with which students emerge from a degree program will be predicated, in part, on their ability to find more information than that which got them through the degree program. Top law firms have, in recent years, made clear that one of the deficiencies of even their top-of-the-class recruits lies in their relatively inadequate preparation to conduct definitive research independently. Looking for the information in all the wrong places is not a humorous country-western song title at $250 per hour and up in the world of litigation and pay-perminute time clocks.
If librarians’ productivity, or a library’s performance, is measured by the level of skills shown by the ability of graduating students to compete in the real world of libraries, databases, and Web sites, then we need some guidelines. Nothing as simple as the number of FTE students per class, which has been a measure of quality that was once accepted for teaching workloads, will suffice. If quality of library service is to be embedded in the equation for performance evaluation, then some performance indicators must be developed. Standards? That may be premature for a field which is dealing with such a fast moving target; but certainly some kind of guidelines, measures, or clear-cut goals is needed. Will our professional associations help? Or, do we risk falling behind the curve by allowing legislatures and boards to come up with their own methodologies? Standardized high school achievement tests have been pushed at high political levels. We would do well to avoid the push-politics that creates this type of situation.
January 1999 45