With the explosion of digitized information, libraries stand at the cutting edge for research universities and other institutions of higher education. At the same time, libraries are under increasing pressure to justify every expenditure. Historically the justification has involved assessing the size of a library, in various ways, and determining its rank or position among a group of peer institutions. This approach does not answer the crucial stake holder question: does the rank in terms of cost justify the services delivered? To answer this question it is vital to know how the costs (inputs) of these libraries are related to, and determined by the services that are rendered. We apply here a new analytical tool, data envelop analysis (DEA), which can provide better understanding of the efficiency of academic research libraries. Instead of telling us the average performance among libraries being analyzed, this method, with proper model of library inputs and outputs, tells us the best practices in the peer groups as well as the technical efficiency score for each library. We report the results of a study using 1994-1995 ARL (Association of Research Libraries) statistics together with the expert judgments, in terms of constraints, to make the model more applicable to the evaluation of libraries. This method of summarizing library efficiency not only overcomes the shortcomings of size-based comparisons but also provides new information regarding specific library operation improvements. The study also has the potential to be applied in the new digital library environment.

 
*This research is supported in part by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) under Grant #6607, and by the Alexandria Project Laboratory at SCILS, Rutgers University.  The research was performed at the Alexandria Laboratory Laboratory, School of Communication, Information and Library Studies, Rutgers University.