Measuring outcomes: applying cost-benefit analysis to middle-sized and smaller public libraries - Public Libraries

15) With sufficient information, it is possible to measure the nature and extent of economic benefits received by each class of patron for each type of service used. Classes of patrons can be identified by cardholder type and/or by self-identification. No matter what are the means of differentiation, care has to be taken because user types tend to overlap. In CBA II, however, to reduce survey costs for smaller libraries, the survey design will not identify separate classes of users and no such comparisons among user groups will appear.

16) Some CBA measures are more useful than others. As the CBA literature predicts for the whole range of activities, consumer-surplus and willingness-to-pay benefits estimates of library services were more accurate than willingness-to-accept measurements. The researchers also found that the cost-of-time measure that had been considered at the beginning of the project was less useful than other CBA study methods. This methodology, therefore, was not reported in the study results. It will not be included in the CBA II study.

17) CBA I measured the benefits from both public and private dollars. Return on taxpayer investment calculations, in addition to tax-dollar benefits, can assess the benefits of private contributions, foundation grants, and grants from different levels of government. This measure will not change in CBA II.

18) The study produced a replicable methodology, but one that is not without high expense. The biggest expense was the cost of surveys, and this expense was based on the amount of detail that the research team was attempting to capture. Based upon the experience in this project, the researchers recognize that they need less detail to produce reliable results. The costs of future CBA studies at smaller, less complex library systems therefore can be reduced.

CBA AS AN OUTCOME MEASUREMENT

The CBA II research team anticipates that many of the outcome relationships identified in the previous study will hold true in the new study. If these findings do hold up, then the research team will have applied cost-benefit analysis to fourteen different public libraries, large, medium-sized, and smaller, in eight different states. The study already has been replicated successfully when the initial PLA-funded case study was replicated in the first multilibrary IMLS-funded study. Furthermore, the CBA II team expects to be able to conduct the middle-sized and smaller library research far more cheaply per site than the large library study. From a cost standpoint, this project should bring the measurement methodology into the budget range of many more institutions than was possible using the methodology developed in CBA I. Admittedly, CBA II will not measure all of the benefits that libraries confer directly upon all classes of users. The original intention, however, was not to find every benefit but to estimate a conservative lower bound of benefits.

Outcome measurement will become a valued and even necessary tool for library administrators. It will provide a standard, easily understood statement of how their users benefit from a library's services. Museums already have such a tool in their applications of economic impact analysis. IMLS and NISO both recognize the need for libraries to have such outcome-measurement tools. Cost-benefit analysis, now applied not only in the United States but in Norway and New Zealand as well, is recognized increasingly as a valuable outcome-measurement tool. Considerable work remains to be done to perfect the tool's wide applicability to public libraries. Much already has been accomplished.