Unfortunately, a budget allocated to a library can vary depending on the size of the school, the nature of the school and even the demographic the school is situated in! For school libraries, it is (sadly) highly probable that budget allocation is inadequate. When funds are tight, teacher librarians (TLs) are often challenged to make difficult decisions based on which resources best fit the needs of their individual school collection and the community (Softlink, 2017). E-resources, particularly digital resources, such as databases, are expensive and users need to have competent knowledge of how to access and navigate these, if they are to prove their worth. Our school subscribes to EBSCOhost, Brittanica and World Book and these subscriptions alone consume nearly half of our allocated budget. Whilst these resources are indeed excellent, frequent and authentic use of these resources must be validated to warrant the costs involved in maintaining these subscriptions.

Output measures, according to Matthews (2015) states that output measures determine the degree to which a library’s resources and services are utilised, and ultimately, the more these resources and services are being utilised, the costs involved are therefore justified. We are able to set up monthly usage report that indicates (in EBSCOhost) which databases have been accessed (reference centres). At the beginning of last year, we conducted a review of these reports and saw that usage statistics were quite low. I was able to conduct surveys investigating the poor usage of these resources and was able to draw on this data to improve student and teacher interaction with these services. Ultimately, a lack of awareness of what was available and a laborious number of access points to arrive at these databases, allowed us to both streamline the access points (landing page) and provide greater education of how to utilise these services. After a rather intensive promotional campaign, we saw usage statistics increase by 800%! Whilst this was a promising and positive result, what we couldn’t gauge was how this information provided in these resources was used, helpful or even provided students with the outcome they were hoping for. Whilst output measures are quantitative, they don’t allow us to fully gauge how effective and indeed valuable, e-resources are. We just assume.

Our Wheelers platform of audio and eBooks do provide us with more concrete statistics of loans and circulation, and the number of patron requests we receive do highlight their popularity and use. Unfortunately, purchasing titles for this platform is costly and one that we do restrict, however this is one way that we can measure the output more accurately, based on the statistics and feedback we receive from this service.

Matthews, J., (2015) Assessing outcomes and value: it’s all a matter of perspective.  Performance Measurement and Metrics, Vol. 16 Issue: 3, pp.211-233, https://doi.org/10.1108/ PMM-10-2015-0034

Softlink. (2017). 2017 Australian and New Zealand school library survey. Retrieved from https://www.softlinkint.com/downloads/2017_Softlink_Australian_and_New_Zealand_School_Library_Survey_Report.pdf