51,419 research outputs found
Recent Trends in Academic Library Materials Expenditures
published or submitted for publicatio
Recent Trends in Funding for the Academic Humanities and Their Implications
[Excerpt] Never abundant, financial support for the âacademic humanitiesâ is now scarce. How scarce it is, both in absolute and relative terms, and whether the humanities now confront particularly hard times, are the pressing questions. To piece together an answer, we ask first how much the government, foundations, and private donors provide for the humanities now compared to estimates John DâArms made in 1995, when he completed his important review of âfunding trends.â
Then we probe expenditures universities and colleges make on the humanities.
Is there evidence, for example, in institutional budget allocations that the humanities are holding their own, or have rising costs of other academic activities, such as scientific research, been accompanied by reduced support for the humanities? And last, because public universities are so large and numerous,
and because many operate on conspicuously tight budgets, we ask how well the humanities in this class of institutions have fared in comparison with their counterparts at private universities. The answers to such questions are not mere matters of financial accounting. Although much can be achieved in the humanities with quite small investments, the pursuit of excellence in scholarship and teaching in these fields is not cost-free. For relevant evidence, we draw on the American Academy of Arts and Sciencesâs useful Humanities Indicators Prototype, as well as a variety of other available (but often imperfect) data sources
Introduction to Library Trends 28 (1) Summer 1979: The Economics of Academic Libraries
published or submitted for publicatio
Topographic Map Acquisition In U.S. Academic Libraries
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Electronic Resources and Academic Libraries, 1980-2000: A Historical Perspective
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Students With Disabilities and California's Special Education Program
Provides an overview of the state's special education programs, including eligibility, enrollment, student performance, time spent outside regular classrooms, spending, and financing, compared to national trends. Considers policy implications
Rural and County School Libraries
published or submitted for publicatio
The political economy of efficient public good provision: evidence from Flemish libraries using a generalised conditional efficiency framework
Provision of most public goods (e.g., health care, library services, education, utilities) can be characterised by a two-stage âproductionâ process. The first stage translates basic inputs (e.g., labour and capital) into service potential (e.g., opening hours), while the second stage describes how these programmatic inputs are transformed into observed outputs (e.g., school outcomes, library circulation). While the latter stage is best analysed in a supply-demand framework, particularly in the former stage one would like to have efficient public production. Hence, unlike previous work on public sector efficiency (which often conflates both âproductionâ stages), this paper analyses how political economy factors shape efficient public good provision in stage one (using local public libraries as our centre of attention). To do so, we use a specially tailored, fully non-parametric efficiency model. The model is rooted in popular Data Envelopment Analysis models, but allows for both outlying observations and heterogeneity (i.e., a conditional efficiency model). Using an exceptionally rich dataset comprising all 290 Flemish public libraries, our findings suggest that the ideological stance of the local government, the wealth and density of the local population and the source of library funding (i.e., local funding versus intergovernmental transfers) are crucial determinants of library efficiency.Nonparametric estimation, Conditional efficiency, Political economy, Public good provision, Libraries.
Special Libraries, April 1954
Volume 45, Issue 4https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_sl_1954/1003/thumbnail.jp
The political economy of efficient public good provision: evidence from flemish libraries using a generalised conditional efficiency framework.
Provision of most public goods (e.g., health care, library services, education, utilities) can be characterised by a two-stage âproductionâprocess. The first stage translates basic inputs (e.g., labour and capital) into service potential (e.g., opening hours), while the second stage describes how these programmatic inputs are transformed into observed outputs (e.g., school outcomes, library circulation). While the latter stage is best analysed in a supply-demand framework, particularly in the former stage one would like to have efficient public production. Hence, unlike previous work on public sector efficiency (which often conflates both âproductionâstages), this paper analyses how political economy factors shape efficient public good provision in stage one (using local public libraries as our centre of attention). To do so, we use a specially tailored, fully non-parametric efficiency model. The model is rooted in popular Data Envelopment Analysis models, but allows for both outlying observations and heterogeneity (i.e., a conditional efficiency model). Using an exceptionally rich dataset comprising all 290 Flemish public libraries, our findings suggest that the ideological stance of the local government, the wealth and density of the local population and the source of library funding (i.e., local funding versus intergovernmental transfers) are crucial determinants of library efficiency.Nonparametric estimation; Conditional efficiency; Political economy; Public good provision; Libraries;
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