What do higher education management and administration expect of library benchmarking? Results of a workshop on BIX – the Library Index for Academic Libraries in Germany

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to report on the results of a workshop held to discover the performance measurement requirements deemed to be necessary by the management of higher education establishments and state authorities in Germany.

Design/methodology/approach

A workshop is held with representatives of university directorates and their libraries, members of the ministries for research and higher education at state level, experts on performance measurement for libraries, and representatives of the German Library association and BIX management.

Findings

The workshop provides answers regarding which issues a benchmarking system should cover, and what functional requirements the system should meet.

Practical implications

An agreed set of new performance measures is defined and agreed to be put into practice in the near future.

Originality/value

The workshop allows collaboration between the libraries who helped develop the BIX Library Index, and the HE authorities whose needs were fundamentally different, to reach common ground and understanding for data sets and metrics required for the future.

Citation

Wimmer, U. (2009), "What do higher education management and administration expect of library benchmarking? Results of a workshop on BIX – the Library Index for Academic Libraries in Germany", Performance Measurement and Metrics, Vol. 10 No. 2, pp. 116-121. https://doi.org/10.1108/14678040911005464