The purpose of this paper is to examine potential new uses of return on investment (ROI) in alternative methods for library assessment and valuation.
Uses examples of recent uses of ROI by libraries to identify potential new applications of ROI in library assessment and valuation.
ROI investment has historically been used by libraries for the assessment of past performance of library organizations in a reactive/defensive nature or for assessing the value of customer services. ROI has not been widely used as a proactive assessment tool, to introspectively assess administrative or other internal services, or as an offensive assessment and valuation tool, especially for intangible performance assessment and valuation.
New applications of the ROI assessment tool could provide library administrators with proactive means of increasing the effectiveness of library assessment, valuation, and their results.
