Performance Measurement of Medical Libraries in Sri Lanka A Comparative Study

Abstract

This study measured performance of libraries of Faculties of Medicine of University of Colombo, University of Kelaniya and University of Sri Jayawardenapura using suitable iperformance indicators. Thirty (30) indicators from international standards developed by FLA (International Federation of Library Associations and Federations), A LA erican Library Association) and ISO (International Standard Institution), to measure brary performance were selected as suitable to measure performance of medical libraries §i Sri Lanka. pwever, out of the thirty indicators used for measuring performance in this study, five dicators were found as inappropriate to measure performance of academic libraries in i Lanka in the present study due to their inapplicability. ||easuring performance with twenty-nine indicators was carried out using available |§>rary statistics and various data. For some indicators, sample observations and counts fere used. Research instrument to measure the indicator 'user survey' was a iiestionnaire. User populations consisting of undergraduate students following MBBS ||gree program and academic staff members of UCFM, UKFM and SJPFM were prveyed separately. Sample sizes for the survey were 100, 97 and 96 for undergraduate |udents of UCFM, UKFM and SJPFM respectively and 88, 55 and 60 for academic staff lembers of the same respectively. While random sampling was carried out for Indergraduate students of the three faculties, convenient sampling method was followed or selecting the sample of academic staff members at all the three faculties surveyed. Comparative analysis of findings revealed that UCFM library showed highest Performance in media processing speed, employee productivity in media processing, loans per employee, ratio of ILL requests received to requests sent, percentage of stock not used, seat occupancy rate, library visits per capita, service point use and percentage of library means received by special grants or income generation. It was revealed that the reasons for poor performance in some indicators of the Medical library of University of Colombo was due to lack of space and the loan policy allowing lending of a single book at a time per user.