Evaluating the benefits of the WHELF consortial approach to a library management system (LMS)

Abstract

In June 2016 Jisc funded an independent evaluation of the WHELF Shared Library Management System project to ‘understand and identify the benefits of the WHELF LMS within a structured framework’. Cambridge Econometrics (CE) was commissioned to carry out the project. CE completed the final report in September 2017 based on a range of data, including costs associated with legacy systems and the actual costs for procuring and implementing the selected system. A further factor in determining benefits was the predicted costs for counterfactual scenarios which, in most cases, would have seen institutions procure systems separately and not as part of a consortium