[WEB4LIB] Re: What is the value of a library web site?

[Karen Harker]

What about an increase in usage of library resources, which results in a decrease of cost per user?  What if the increase in usage results in increase in funding?

For a corporate library, ROI could be calculated in the increase in productivity of remote users, who do not need to waste time getting to the physical library in order to use the resources.  There may also be greater productivity of users who can find helpful resources quicker than surfing the Web.

These are factors I would consider.



Karen R. Harker, MLS
UT Southwestern Medical Library
5323 Harry Hines Blvd.
Dallas, TX  75390-9049
214-648-1698
http://www.swmed.edu/library/

>>> "Joyce M. Latham" <latham1 at students.uiuc.edu> 8/14/01 3:09:04 PM >>>
You are of course correct.  But for libraries what can we consider a
return on investment?  For instance, the Chicago Public Library gets
over 11 million hits a month, but, basically, so what?  The value of
that web site is not for sale -- i.e., no advertiser is going to get
access to it.  I don't think, anyway ...

Now, any vendor who wants to make some kind of contribution to CPL to
further some programming objective as a corporate partner may get their
name tied into a logo that promotes the project, but you can't really
sell that because there is no staying power beyond the exposure of the
project.

There may be some political payoff in terms of the municipal government
-- i.e., we get this much traffic and that's more news about our locale
getting out there -- simple PR -- but there never has been a way to
really balance the ROI in libraries, particularly public ones.

Any thoughts?

Joyce

rich at richardwiggins.com wrote:
> 
> All of that adds up to the cost of the site -- fixed and recurring costs of building it and maintaining it.  I think Kati is looking for both sides of the equation: the investment, and the return on that investment.  In other words, showing how much benefit is returned to the organization for having spent all that money.
> 
> A lot of public libraries gather lots of statistics about usage and about budgets, making it possible to calculate things like books checked out per citizen per annum.  There will always be lots of intangible benefits whose value is hard to quantify.  There might be some useful ideas in the literature on corporate intranets and on CRM or SAP systems.
> 
> /rich
> 
> On Tue, 14 August 2001, "Joyce M. Latham" wrote:
> 
> >
> > Having managed a fairly large web site myself, I would simply look at
> > human hours for development and maintenance of the *site*. You would
> > have to begin with average weekly scheduled time, and then add
> > high-pressure development hours -- when a site has to be hastily
> > developed for some key political or economic event.  We never did any
> > outsourcing of anything so I can't speak to those kinds of costs.
> >
> > Question: If you are using any subject specialist development, do you
> > include them in the cost?  For instance, if the Business, Science and
> > Technology librarian is helping to maintain the content for the BST
> > pages on the site, do you include the cost of their contribution?  Or,
> > if their contribution would not be outsourced, do you leave it off?
> >
> > and then there are the hardware costs -- main server, backup server,
> > development server, development workstations -- and the costs of
> > maintaining those, along with periodic upgrades ( all servers must be
> > identical).
> >
> > Joyce
> >
> > Sunner wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > I'm working on a ROI of the Information Centre for management and am trying
> > > to find out if there is a formula for valuing a web site. I've done return
> > > on investment evaluations on other aspects of information services before,
> > > but nothing I have is adaptable to a web site. To date I have failed to turn
> > > up anything useful.
> > >
> > > If anyone has any leads, ideas etc it would be greatly appreciated.
> > >
> > > Many thanks.
> > >
> > > Kati
> > >
> > > "... knowing that to be a librarian was to come as close as any human being
> > > can to sitting in the peak-seat of eternity's engine."
> > > - Stephen King
> > > ___________________________________________
> > >
> > > Kati Sunner
> > >
> > > Federation of Education Unions Information Centre
> > > 120 Clarendon St. Southbank Victoria 3006 Australia
> > > Telephone: +61 3 9254 1800 Fax: +61 3 9254 1805
> > > Website: http://www.feuic.org.au
> > > E-mail: katis at feuic.org.au
> > >
> > > Alternate e-mail: sunner at bigpond.net.au
> > > ___________________________________________
> >
> > --
> > Joyce M. Latham
> > GSLIS -- University of Illinois
> >
> >    "Strictly speaking, there are no enlightened people; there is
> > only     enlightened activity."  Suzuki Roshi
> 
> _____________________________________________________
> 
> Richard Wiggins
> Writing, Speaking, and Consulting on the Internet
> rich at richardwiggins.com  http://richardwiggins.com

-- 
Joyce M. Latham
GSLIS -- University of Illinois

   "Strictly speaking, there are no enlightened people; there is
only     enlightened activity."  Suzuki Roshi



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