Measuring impact and outcomes

Citation

Parker, S. (2002), "Measuring impact and outcomes", Performance Measurement and Metrics, Vol. 3 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/pmm.2002.27903caa.001

Measuring impact and outcomes

Measuring impact and outcomes

All of the articles in this issue arise from the one-day workshop held on Thursday 22 August 2002, within the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) conference in Glasgow, UK. The workshop was held under the auspices of the Statistics Section of IFLA and the Research and Theory Section and thanks are due to Wanda Dole (Washburn University, USA) and Kerry Smith (Curtin University, Australia) for facilitating the meeting. It was called "Northumbria Lite", as one of the aims of the day was to condense the successful format of the normally four-day Northumbria International Conference on Performance Measurement in Libraries and Information Services. The intention was to bring scrutinised, scholarly and well-researched papers to IFLA and to bring a taste of Northumbria to Glasgow. A specialised culinary equivalent would be an excellent Haggis Stottie.

The main aim of the day was to examine the meaning and context of the "Outcomes" of library services and to see if these can be quantified and measured in a meaningful way and benchmarked to provide comparability. IFLA provided an excellent opportunity to do this within an international context. Papers were invited in differing formats. Roswitha Poll of University of Muenster gave a rich and very colourful paper that provided the background to the identification of meaningful outcomes. Bob Usherwood, of Sheffield University and John Sumsion, of Loughborough University, both from the UK, supported her. Roswitha's and John's papers will appear in the first edition of the Journal for 2003, but Bob's thought-provoking and challenging paper appears in this issue. If anyone has any responses or comments on the paper I will be pleased to publish them in the next edition.

The other two formats were plenary, substantial papers and brief concurrent workshop papers for discussion. The size and shape of the room provided by IFLA was not suitable for the concurrent workshops and thus all of the papers were formally presented to the whole audience, but there was time available for discussion sessions. The audience was very informed and international in nature and thus the discussion was rich and profitable. There is not space in this edition to publish all of the papers. As indicated above, the remaining papers will be published in the next issue.

One of the developing themes of the day itself was the growing question: "Is customer satisfaction an outcome?". As one delegate said: "Northumbria Lite did provide an enticing taster for Northumbria Heavy". The next full Northumbria International Conference on Performance Measurement, "Library measures to fill the void: assessing outcomes", will be a Pre IFLA conference 28-31 July 2003, and will be held in Durham City, England. The exciting news is that some of the giants who bestride our world will be attending. A. Parasuraman, from the University of Miami Department of Marketing, will give a keynote address, as will Peter Hernon, of Simmons College, Graduate School of Library and Information Science. There will be a debate on the differing philosophies underpinning performance measurement during the conference. John Bertot, Roswitha Poll and Rowena Cullen will also be speaking (details at the back of this issue. It promises to be a dynamic, challenging and rewarding conference set in the wonderful city of Durham, ancient capital of Northumbria. I hope to see you there.

Sandra Parker