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The average American child spends more time “playing”¹ than doing any other activity besides sleeping and attending school (watching television comes in next, with children gradually replacing play time with TV time as they grow older) (Hofferth & Sandberg, 2001a, b). In fact, free, unstructured time makes up between 20 and 50% of children’s waking hours² (Hofferth & Sandberg, 2001a, b; Larson & Richards, 1989). Nonetheless, sociologists currently know very little about how children’s free time use influences their well-being. Although scholars, teachers, and parents all have strong opinions about the types of free-time activities that they think are “best” for children, recent studies of the association between children’s time use and their well-being have failed to find consistent associations (Hofferth & Sandberg, 2001a, b; McHale, Crouter & Tucker, 2001).

Purpose — This chapter provides an historical overview of assessments of research quality conducted by the UK funding councils in the period 1986–2008, with special reference to the assessments that have been carried out of departments in the library and information management (LIM) sector.

Methodology/approach — A literature review covering both LIM-specific material and more general sources discussing the assessment of research quality in UK universities.

Findings — There is clear evidence of an increase in the general quality of the research carried out by the LIM sector over the review period. This has been accompanied by a decrease in the number of traditional LIM departments submitting themselves for assessment, with these being replaced in the assessment process largely by information systems departments. The rankings over the review period have been dominated by a small number of departments with long-established research traditions.

Originality/value of the paper — While there is an extensive literature describing research assessment in general, and a few articles describing individual assessments in the LIM sector, there is no overview of the involvement of the LIM departments over the whole series of assessment exercises that has been carried out.