INFORMATION DELIVERY - IDENTIFYING PRIORITIES, PERFORMANCE, AND VALUE

Although technology might have improved information organisation, deli very, and access mechanisms, information services unit (ISU) managers continue to have difficulties in identifying the benefit to the parent organisation of the information services provided. Traditional evalua tion techniques provide indicators of operational efficiency and impro vements over time. However, these need to be complemented by technique s that seek to identify the benefits of those information services to the organisation in terms having meaning to both managers and users. T his paper outlines two techniques that bridge the gap between those us ed by senior managers and those with which ISU managers have been comf ortable. The first approach, priority and performance evaluation, buil ds on critical success factor methodology. This is complemented by a f orm of cost-benefit analysis applied to current awareness services. Th ese two approaches were trialled in two organisations and found to mak e an effective contribution to evaluating library and information serv ices in terms understood by users, management, and the provider group.