Proposal of an evaluation system for university libraries

Abstract

In spite of the evident importance of performance evaluation in the planning, resource management and future development of any organization, this type of measurement has seldom been used in Spanish university libraries. However, budget restrictions, institutional pressure and a growing coneern with quality have obliged and are obliging our university libraries to increasingly set themselves the challenge of knowing and evaluating their own working system, with a view to improving their levels of benefit and efficiency. It is within this framework that we can situate the need for designing an evaluation system that will permit an appraisal of the functioning of these information units in a continuous and standardized way, and yield the qualitative data necessary for solid and well-grownded decision making. The system proposed herein facilitates this measuring on two levels: one that is merely descriptive and which obtains "raw" data on the different aspects involved in a university library, and one that is analytic and formulates indicators for the processing and interpretation of this information.