White Paper

Information centers are faced with a constant push to reduce expenses and staff, despite the fact that most information professionals are already struggling to keep up with available resources and client demand. In order to respond to questions of the value of an information center, we must be able to identify our organization’s key goals, find ways to tie the information center’s activities to those goals, measure the information center’s impact and then effectively communicate the quantifiable value that the information center brings to the organization. This white paper is designed to help you clearly articulate the ROI of your information center and your information services.

As one info pro I spoke with commented, “To find ROI, look at impact, not function. Ask yourself why you’re doing this, not how.” By changing how we see the library’s role from an information place to an information service, we can maintain a healthy perspective about our most important roles.

Often, the most tangible role info pros can play is saving professional time and budget. A 2007 study by Outsell¹ found that an average library interaction saved the user nine hours, and there is no reason to believe that number has changed in the last decade. By calculating the average hourly cost of an info pro and that of a strategic library user, a powerful case can be made for the ROI of information services.

If you assume that most of the users of information are knowledge workers or professionals and that their annual salary averages $120,000, the full cost of an information user’s time is $79/hour.² An info pro’s time, with a salary of $100,000, is $66/hour. Add in the fact that an info pro usually takes far less time to find, analyze and distill information than a user would, the savings can be dramatic. The following table shows how to calculate the annual savings from having info pros handle research projects. You can insert your own values in the shaded boxes to see how much your information center saves your organization in direct time savings.

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In addition to the time savings, there are direct savings from strategic centralized purchases of information when compared to ad hoc and personal credit card purchases. An experienced information center manager can negotiate an enterprise-wide agreement that provides cost-effective access to the key information sources researchers need. When you also factor in the time saved by users using a professional online service rather than the open web, the ROI of information services is even more compelling.

Another assumption is that research conducted on a fee-based online service will save at least 30 minutes of fruitless searching on the open web. Assuming that the full text of articles downloaded from a professional online service would cost an average of $25 to purchase or obtain through interlibrary loan, the direct savings add up quickly. You can insert your own values in the following table to calculate the direct savings you realize from bringing in a professional online information service.

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In some settings, information centers can tie revenue directly to their services by identifying client groups involved in income-generating roles. By conducting informational interviews^3, you can learn about opportunities to contribute to efforts to increase sales, improve quality, shorten the time to get a product to market, or identify new market opportunities. There may even be outside organizations the library can partner with to provide library services, such as a business incubator providing embedded library services at local companies it is supporting. This can foster strong relationships with your stakeholder community, which adds value to your organization as well.

Format indicates value; when we provide information that is less user-friendly, less visual, or more text-heavy, we devalue our deliverables. Before you send the results of your work to a client, review them with an eye for making them as useful as possible. Reflect on what your client will be using the information for – to insert in a presentation? share with a team? guide a decision? support a grant? – and consider how you might design your results to save your client time and make the information easier to use. 

As mentioned earlier, to communicate our ROI we need to focus on impact, not function.  While we info pros understand the value we provide to our organization, the vocabulary we use to describe ourselves and the information services we provide may inadvertently send a different message. Encourage the information center staff to describe their work in terms of outcome instead of activity.

• Replace “we provide research services” with “we provide you with answers to your biggest challenges”
• Replace “we centralize our organization’s information acquisition functions” with “we ensure more strategic spending by negotiating for cost-effective enterprise access to essential resources”
• Replace “we support R&D efforts with alert services” with “we help decrease R&D expenses by ensuring better, more timely access to the information you need"

Finally, remember that what really sets info pros apart is that we are focused on ensuring that our organization succeeds. The librarian at a state business incubator described to me how her library shows that they care. “In our unit, we have a mantra: We say yes. We’ll take on critical projects that no other group wants. That way, we’ve become integral to every unit at the Center.  We even took over the contact management database for the Center, because it ensured we are integrated into the work of every unit. It’s how we maintain intelligence about the key players in our industry, and the data we manage informs how we justify our work.” 

Compared to just a few years ago, information professionals are providing higher-value analysis of information, becoming more involved in user-experience consultation, managing more complex information products and services, and working more proactively to provide the strategic information resources their organizations need not just today but six months from now. It is more important than ever to use all the approaches available to measure and communicate the tremendous impact that we have on our organizations.