Cranfield PSU and Library Services

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Browsing Cranfield PSU and Library Services by Subject "Benchmarking"

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    Benchmarking and library quality maturity
    (Emerald Group Publishing, 2005-10-26T17:55:04Z) Wilson, Frankie; Town, J. Stephen
    It remains unresolved from the literature whether benchmarking is a useful and appropriate tool for the library and information services sector. The aim of this research was to gather evidence to establish whether benchmarking provides a real and lasting benefit to library and information services. The study investigated the long term effects of a benchmarking exercise on the quality level of three UK academic libraries. However, an appropriate framework for assessing the quality level of libraries is not present in the literature, and it was therefore necessary for such a framework to be developed. This article describes and provides initial characterisation of the framework developed - the Quality Maturity Model. The evidence from the investigation showed that the two libraries which were at stage one on the QMM before the benchmarking exercise remained there; and the library which scored at the penultimate level, level four, before benchmarking, was, four years afterwards, at level five. The tentative conclusion drawn were that benchmarking may only be appropriate for organisations with a existing high level of quality maturity. Much further work is proposed.
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    Benchmarking of Online Information Literacy Tutorials to Identify Lessons Learnt and Best Practice.
    (2005-10-26T17:59:52Z) Hunn, Ruth A.; Elliott, Amanda C.; Town, J. Stephen
    This paper reports the process and findings of a benchmarking exercise conducted on 10 online information literacy tutorials from around the English speaking World. The benchmarking exercise comprised site visits and the completion of an online survey. The aim of the exercise was to establish best practice and to gather any lessons that could be learnt, with the overall purpose of determining ways that our information literacy tutorial could provide the best quality and performance through the identification of user requirements. The method of selecting the tutorials to benchmark against and the areas to include in the review is described. A summary of results from each of the benchmarked areas is included for: pedagogical issues; design, development and user feedback; content; interactivity; and look and feel.