A bibliometric approach to evaluating the impact of national libraries

Abstract

In order to understand the value to society of a national library, it is essential to go beyond counting usage figures and understand impacts; 'the difference that the library makes'. The paper suggests that, for the National Library of Scotland (NLS), a key impact is the generation of new knowledge. A viable proxy for measuring this impact is establishing the number of publications produced in which the authors cite the use of NLS collections or services. The paper proposes a simple methodology for estimating the number of such research outputs through a bibliometric analysis of Google Scholar and other research resources.