Article about library's monetary value

[NNLM PNR]

How much is your library worth?  Why should your institution fund it?

There is a very interesting article in the online journal "TR Update"
about the monetary value of a library to its institution.  The author
presents calculations showing total annual cost savings to the instution
from services such as reference and document delivery, then shows a way to
estimate the total annual added value of the library's services, and from
there (using his library's annual budget) demonstrates that his library
has a benefit to cost ratio of 12:1 and a very substantial annual return
on investment.

The article is about a transportation library, but a health sciences
library could find the same techniques valuable for providing information
to management about a library's monetary value to an institution.

Article is at http://www.transportconnect.net/trupdate/article2.html (Its
title is "MN/DOT Library Accomplishments" but don't let that discourage
you!  Look for the cost estimates highlighted in blue.)

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