E‐measures: a comprehensive waste of time?

Purpose. To provide a critique, some sources of data, and a broader conception for informing development of e‐measures frameworks for use in academic library services. Approach. Suggests that the broader context for e‐measurement is investigated and provides a critique of current thinking. Provides four additional sources or routes for improved measures, including scholarly communication methods, information literacy, developments in measuring library and e‐service quality, and the critical success factors of serials staff. Develops a proposed framework for e‐measures based on the balanced scorecard approach. Findings. Provides specific suggestions arising from the four sources for relevant e‐measures, and provides a framework based on the balanced scorecard which incorporates these and other suggestions for data collection under the following perspectives: financial, customers, process and projects, staff development, and organisational learning and development. Value. The paper will be valuable to library directors and managers and library researchers interested in the field of performance measurement and evaluation of e‐resources. It provides some original thinking about the problem and suggests some innovative techniques and approaches to addressing the need to develop effective and useful performance measurement frameworks.