Measuring the impact of special collections and archives in the digital age: opportunities and challenges

摘要

This paper is based on the outcome of a Research Libraries UK (RLUK)project that aimed to explore and understand the approaches employed byRLUK members for capturing and measuring the impact of activities basedon special collections and archives. In today’s constantly evolving informationand scholarly environment, educational and cultural institutions, suchas research libraries, are faced with a pressing demand to assess the valueof their services and evidence their impact. As part of our goal to develop abetter understanding of how research libraries respond to this demand, wecollected and analysed case-study and survey data from across the RLUKmembership that show the practices and methods of research libraries forincreasing and assessing the impact of their collections and related services.As our results showed, research libraries increasingly employ audiencefocusedstrategies and take advantage of the new possibilities offered bythe digital age to enhance access to collections, reach a range of audiencegroups and achieve greater impact. However, a number of issues, such asthe lack of structured methodologies to capture and evaluate the full reachof digital collections and resources or the long-term impact of collections,can make the process of measuring and evidencing value a challengingtask for institutions. In this paper, we will present some of the key findingsshowing the pathways to impact followed by special collection and archiveprofessionals in the UK and Ireland and reflect on the opportunities andchallenges that the digital era presents for increasing and measuring thisimpact.