The value of values

Abstract

Purpose -The paper's aim is to provide insights into issues encountered in maintaining library technologies and electronic collections on a limited budget and with limited personnel. Design/methodology/approach -The paper uses real-world experiences and evidence from the body of literature to provide commentary on the importance of clearly defined missions and goals in an era of shrinking budgets and changing user expectations. Findings -Having a clearly defined library mission statement with underlying goals and outcomes is vital in this time of accountability and assessment in higher education. Librarians must be mindful of the need to connect the goals and outcomes to the overall institutional goals in order to provide measurable and meaningful value. Originality/value -The paper examines one library's struggle to establish an identity in an era where traditional methods of determining value are no longer suitable. The article uses dialogue from departmental meetings coupled with evidence from the library literature to state the importance of finding and communicating value in an era of accountability."Before we make any wholesale changes to our collections, services, policies, procedures, and even the arrangement of our furniture, it's vital that we come to some conclusions as to who we are and what we want to be". Those were the words of one of my own colleagues at a recent department meeting, one in which there were several rather heated exchanges regarding the future direction of our academic unit. Specifically, we were discussing a collective and comprehensive effort to weed our collection of roughly 300,000 bound volumes, many of which were purchased prior to 1975 and have never once circulated. This weeding project is one of the recommendations in a plan developed by my department's Planning Committee, a group formed following a rather contentious takeover of 3,000 square feet of library space in order to build an 85-seat math emporium. That is correct, the Planning Committee was formed only after contingencies from outside the library made the decision to take over the space; another case of reactivity as opposed to proactivity and a symptom of not knowing who we are and what we want to be.This knowing and understanding of that most fundamental question is an awareness that is a product of a well thought-out mission statement based upon institutional values, visions, outcomes, and goals. We have a mission statement, one that is more than those relics of the past wherein a department simply states its intentions to support the greater mission of the university. Ours reads as follows: "The mission of the Edinboro University libraries is to serve the information needs of the university community and to support the teaching and research programs of the The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0888-045X.htm BL 26,1 4

The Effectiveness of Marketing Communication and Importance of Its Evaluation in an Online Environment

“…Justifying the value of the intervention of companies in online environment and knowing what the usefulness or benefits are of marketing in this area have been priorities over the years [70]. As this trend has increased, sellers have had to make the right decisions about key aspects of new forms of online marketing communication and determine how to measure their effectiveness through return on investment [71,72]. Due to the particularities of the tourism sector, ROI is constituted as suitable for the measurement of the effectiveness of online marketing actions, since the subjectivity that runs through the entire tourism process encourages the inclusion of measurement tools that take this fact into account [73].…”

Bibliotecas, medios y métricas de la web social

“…Tanto en el ámbito de las empresas como en el de las organizaciones en general, incluidas las bibliotecas, justificar el valor de lo que hacen en los medios sociales ha sido una prioridad en estos últimos años (Kingma y Mcclure, 2015;McMullen, 2013;Haddow, 2013;Oakleaf, 2011;Tessler, 2013). Buscar el ROI (Return On Investment), encontrar métricas que pongan en evidencia el retorno de la inversión realizada, se ha convertido en un objetivo en el que asociaciones, organizaciones y expertos en marketing no dejan de realizar sus apuestas y conjeturas.…”

“…Podemos decir que hoy día el uso de los medios sociales ha alcanzado su punto de madurez debido al uso generalizado, aunque no sin reticencias y críticas (Parry, 2012; Cefrio, 2012; Ravindran, Chua, Kuan, Goh y Lian, 2014;Isfandyari-Moghaddam y Hosseini-Shoar, 2014). Los dispositivos móviles tienen una importancia estratégica en el auge de los medios sociales y las tecnologías ponibles o el internet de las cosas, están potenciando aún más su aspecto social.Tanto en el ámbito de las empresas como en el de las organizaciones en general, incluidas las bibliotecas, justificar el valor de lo que hacen en los medios sociales ha sido una prioridad en estos últimos años (Kingma y Mcclure, 2015;McMullen, 2013;Haddow, 2013;Oakleaf, 2011;Tessler, 2013). Buscar el ROI (Return On Investment), encontrar métricas que pongan en evidencia el retorno de la inversión realizada, se ha convertido en un objetivo en el que asociaciones, organizaciones y expertos en marketing no dejan de realizar sus apuestas y conjeturas.…”

Análisis del retorno de la inversión (ROI) de la actividad en las redes sociales de las provincias andaluzas como destino turístico

“…A medida que esta tendencia ha aumentado, los vendedores han tenido que tomar las decisiones correctas sobre los aspectos claves de los medios sociales y determinar cómo medir su eficacia a través del retorno de la inversión (ROI). Buscar y encontrar métricas para obtener el ROI se ha convertido en un objetivo para organizaciones y expertos en marketing (Kingma y Mcclure, 2015;McMullen, 2013). Según Powell et al (2011) el futuro de los medios sociales y su capacidad de medir el ROI ha generado un gran debate en los últimos años, que ha ido en aumento a medida que las compañías han ido adoptando el uso de plataformas de medios sociales para comunicar sus productos.…”