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For decades, standards on library statistics have provided a solid knowledge base for collecting, reporting and comparing statistical data and therefore been widely respected by libraries nation‐ and world‐wide as an extremely useful and important framework. As electronic resources have established their place besides traditional media, the statistics of library collections and their use have become increasingly complex, partially incomplete and even inconsistent. In this environment, many libraries are facing difficulties in collecting and making use of the data for management decisions and planning. By analysing the environment and its practical, formal and technical obstructions, this contribution tries to identify issues and perspectives for future standardization of library statistics.

Changes and additions to ISO 2789, the international standard Information and Documentation – International Library Statistics, are outlined, along with commentary and explanation of their purpose. Many of these changes relate to new components of libraries’ electronic collections and to their networked services. Some statistics are cited of the present position of electronic serials. Other related work, recently published, is described briefly.

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.

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.

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

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

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.