Costing a library: A generic approach

Determining the relevant costs of library services offered becomes important when the library is made available to individuals or groups that do not normally have access to it. Such groups might include corporations located in adjacent research or industrial parks or other similar profit or nonprofit organizations. In addition, as operational costs are identified, it becomes increasingly possible to identify cost-saving procedures. This paper reviews procedures to obtain activity indicators and provide techniques to translate these indicators into costs. Since such procedures are relatively new for libraries, the paper presents an eight-step process to derive a comprehensive set of costs, especially for research libraries. Each step contains procedures and formulas to assist in its completion.Presented at the Twenty-Eighth Annual Forum of the Association for Institutional Research, Phoenix, Ariz., May 1988.