Developing outcome-based indicators: Resource's learning and access standard

摘要

Resource: the Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries provides strategic guidance, advice and advocacy across the whole of Government on museum, archive and library matters. It is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) in London. One of the strategic objects of Resource is to advise on best practice and the delivery of specific objectives. The purpose of indicators is to assess performance, monitor progress, and provide stakeholders with evidence about activities and services.Therefore, the use of, and need for, effective performance indicators that demonstrate the value and impact of our sectors, underlies one of Resource's key objectives for the year 2001/02, which is to "demonstrate the value of the sector through the publication of statistics and other evidence for advocacy purposes." Resource is a cross-sector organisation, and this paper therefore discusses museums and archives as well as libraries. Resource's current work in this field is in developing a learning and access standard for museums archives and libraries. Resource attaches great importance to access and learning, and this is an area that, in terms of standards, has been relatively underdeveloped in the three domains, which have tended in the past to focus on measuring their own internal activities.This standard is the focus of this paper. This paper could not have been prepared without the help and co-operation of my two colleagues on the steering group for the Resource Learning and Access Standard, Sue Wilkinson at Resource, and Anne Murch, whose many papers written to further the standard's development I have freely plundered. Many thanks to both of them.