Are applicable and useful librarian performance indicators (UNE 50137 standard) for hospital libraries?
Objectives: Test the effectiveness of librarian performance indicators as a tool to assess Health Science and Hospital libraries and try to define those that would be are considered most relevant for this type of libraries.
Material and methods: We selected 6 performance indicators (UNE 50137) that we considered would be easy to obtain and we try to reliably achieve the same data in 4 Hospital libraries with similar features.
We unifyed measurement criteria to perform calculations, in order to perform a reliable comparisson, and annual calculations to: patrons costs; visits to the library per capita; cost per visit to the library; speed of services of document obtaining; volume of loans; loans per capita.
In some cases it was necessary to extract representative samples, obtained randomly so as not to bias the results.
All these calculations were performed using the annual accounting information and statistical data obtained as common tasks of libraries.
Results: A table was elaborated synthesizing the main results obtained for the 6 selected indicators was elaborated.
Conclusions: It is very complicated to apply the same criteria measurement in the different libraries because we do not collect the same data or in the same way, and we do not have accurate and homogeneous measurement systems. The criteria and methodology for data collection has to be unifyed to obtain valid and comparable indicators.
These data and these indicators are not really representative of our work.
Discussion: can UNE 50137 standard apply for hospital libraries? Do the indicators really measure performance in the field of hospital libraries? To what extent are these data useful
