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Unit 12: Academic Library

• planning for new collections or collection areas Notes

• cooperative decision-making with other libraries or within library consortia.

1. End of Libraries

We live in the “end-of-everything” era: the end of time and space, the end of ideology, the end
of geography, the end of history, the end of the nation state, even the end of hope for Africa.
In this same vein, the end of libraries has been proclaimed. Libraries are supposedly being
swept away by the digital revolution. Yet, library power is still very alive, and has become
even more potent in this new age. This priceless power leverages accumulated human intellect
efficiently into human progress. From this power issues the springs of literacy and knowledge,
the seeds of democracy, and the fuel of productivity. The library as a catalyst for human
progress is irreplaceable.
In spite of their enormous power to propel human progress, libraries are increasingly asked
to justify the resources spent on them, to justify even their very existence. In this climate,
libraries must be accountable, responsive, and effective in portraying the value of their services
to funding authorities, be they public or private. These imperatives have led to a new emphasis
on quantitative assessments to provide hard evidence about the extent of their value to the
society or their sponsors. Secondly as online information become more and more available,
arguments against funding of libraries are increasing in number and loudness. Therefore,
assuring the proper functioning of libraries depends on demonstrating their value in the
widest sense and to their widest audiences.

2. Libraries Add Value Even in Monetary Terms

Research has produced hard facts that libraries pay fully for their existence, and even produce
positive returns on the investments made on them. For example, long-term studies of technical
libraries using return on investment analysis (ROI) established that in monetary terms libraries
produce 515% annual return on investment that is five times more than what is invested on
them per annum (Keyes, 1995; Griffiths and King, 1993). Cost-benefit analysis also showed
that the benefits derived from library services outweigh the cost of providing them.
These results were mainly based on the following value dimensions:
• The cost of library users’ time, weighed against the cost of providing professional library
services;
• All costs associated with obtaining a piece of library service on an ad-hoc basis weighted
against the costs of obtaining it from a professionally organized in-house library service;
• The value of having the right information at the right time to increase the speed of an
operation or prevent the undertaking of a potentially useless or wasteful process or
project, modifying work, or stopping an unproductive line of work; and
• The cost a person is willing to pay for library services to enable him or her to successfully
complete a project.
• Return on investment analysis of public library services also show evidence of high
value-added. For example, the table below, which is from an annual report of a public
library district of a developed country, shows how investment in library service yielded
more than fivefold return when compared to the monetarily valued outcomes.

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