Ranking university libraries: The Taiwan case

The present study develops a quantitative model for ranking university libr aries. The ranking is based on five criteria: collections, personnel, expen ditures, buildings, and services, derived from a thorough discussion by the directors of eleven university libraries in Taiwan. Resources and services are of major concern. The relative importance of each criterion is represe nted by a weight summarised from the assessment by the directors of the uni versity libraries in Taiwan. In the comparison, observations from all crite ria are collected and multiplied by the associated weights to produce a com posite index. The index serves as a base for ranking the university librari es. In order to illustrate the method applied, the twenty-four university l ibraries in Taiwan are compared with real data. A robustness analysis shows that this method is very reliable in producing a ranking system for univer sity libraries. Since the comparison is quantitative and represented by exp licit numbers, directions and extent for making improvement is manifested.