The floodgates have been opened to allow a barrage of information into most organizations.
How much of this information comes to the organization at no cost?
How much does it cost to acquire information for which there is a charge?
What are the additional costs for dissemination and storage of information?
What is the value of it all?
Professional Competency 1.7 of the SLA Competencies for Special Librarians of the 21st Century that states that the Special Librarian "calculates a return on investment for the library and its services." In order to do this, you must first determine the amount invested. Here are some tools to help in this effort:
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Describing and Measuring The Costs of Internal and External Information (Word document) Calculating Return on Investment (ROI) For Information Purposes (Word document) Survey to Determine Return on Investment in Information (Word document) Additional Reading (Word document) Links to Related Sites |
Do you have a reasonably good idea of the total amount of money your organization is spending on information? Do you believe anyone in the organization would be able to readily produce this number?
Whether or not you are able to answer these questions may depend on how you define "information". Does your definition encompass internal documents, reports, and databases as well as externally acquired information?
Since the prospect of calculating how much an organization spends on information is quite daunting when you begin to consider all the types of information used in any organization and the variables involved, we are going to first attempt to map out types of internal information and externally-acquired information. We can then develop a plan for systematically calculating costs. And finally, we can develop a plan for measuring the value of that information and for calculating our return on the investment in information.
Having compiled this data and with in-depth knowledge about organization-wide spending on information products and services, information professionals will deepen their credibility as businesspersons and set the stage for further discussion with their peers about the value of information and about broader deployment of information tools throughout the organization.
We welcome your feedback, questions and general thoughts about this topic. Please contact us at infopro@factiva.com.
