Measuring the Efficiency of University Libraries Using Data Envelopment Analysis.pdfVIP

Measuring the Efficiency of University Libraries Using Data Envelopment Analysis 1 2 Nevena Stancheva , Vyara Angelova University of Economics - Varna, Bulgaria th INFORUM 2004: 10 Conference on Professional Information Resources Prague, May 25-27, 2004 Abstract Data envelopment analysis is a non-parametric linear programming-based technique used for measuring the relative performance of organizational units where the presence of multiple inputs and outputs makes comparisons difficult. The aim of this paper is to apply Data envelopment analysis in order to measure the efficiency of University Libraries. The panel data of five University Libraries for years 2002 and 2003 has been estimated. We identified six inputs and three outputs. The input variables are staff, print edition expenses, electronic edition expenses, building space, wages, library technical equipment. As output variables we estimated: number of registered readers, number of customers served, number of borrowed items. We found that three libraries form the efficiency frontier and the other two are inefficient for 2002 and 2003. A benchmark model is recommended for inefficient units. 1. Introduction Because of their specific organization, University Libraries present certain difficulties in their efficiency evaluation. One recent approach to the evaluation of library efficiency is Data envelopment analysis (DEA). There have been a number of studies that applied DEA technique in ord