MEASURING THE GOODNESS OF LIBRARY SERVICES: A GENERAL FRAMEWORK FOR CONSIDERING QUANTITATIVE MEASURES

Abstract

The literature of the last few decades reflects a steadily increasing concern with quantitative assessment of libraries and their services. This concern is both the result of, and a reaction to, growing pressures from within and without the library profession to adopt the tools of the management sciences. The pressures are generated by many factors including the success of these tools in other fields and their adoption by the organizations supporting libraries, the increasingly explicit character of competition for funds at all levels, and the complexity and critical nature of decisions on the host of new options being created by technology and by formalization of library networks.