Developing performance measurement and quality evaluation in Estonian research libraries: Survey of current situation

摘要

The importance of economy, efficiency and effectiveness of library performance set us new goals in the library management and decision-making processes. Performance measurement and quality appraisal are important and useful for libraries of every type. Library performance evaluation is a political process, because it includes allocation of resources. Effectiveness, efficiency and economics have to be considered in library strategic planning, especially financial and policy planning. Over the years there have been several studies on performance measurement, mostly involving academic libraries.This paper gives an overview of some recent surveys and of the Estonian Science Foundation's project Performance Measurement and Evaluation of Research Libraries in Estonia. Finance for scientific research is allocated in the form of grants from the Estonian Science Foundation. The paper also describes the study Library Performance and evaluation:possibilities for extending performance measurement in Estonian research libraries in 1995-2000, dealing with performance measurement and standardisation in Estonia.