Los servicios de información y el retorno de la inversión: cómo llegar a conocerlo

Abstract

Cultural services, and specifically libraries, must justify to society -and to governments- their social and economic performance. They must prove they are not an expense but rather an investment that yields net benefits with a return on investment (ROI) that in some cases can reach 4.5%. Five methods to calculate the value of library services, and some Spanish initiatives with this purpose, are described. The conclusion is that information services have plenty of annual activity data, but the lack of knowledge about the necessary methodology limits the capacity to exploit these data.