What does your library contribute to the bottom line?

From the National Network of Libraries of Medicine:

Cost Benefit and ROI Calculator

How much benefit does your institution, your user, receive for every dollar spent by the library? What's the annual return your institution realizes on what you spend on your collection? Cost/Benefit Analysis and Return on Investment are measures often used by financial managers to gauge the efficiency and effectiveness of their budget policies.

If you haven't looked into value / ROI calculators yet, you need to. Using them is one of the best ways to prove your value to the people who control your money. Don't wait till they're trying to cut your budget!! Start using value calculators now! They don't take perfect measurements, but they can be quite eye-opening to those who wonder why libraries should continue to eat up precious funding: Libraries historically have greater ROIs than many other organizations.

This particular calculator measures the library's value to each medical employee who uses it. This site also has a link to:

* a Retail Value Calculator to demonstrate the benefit of all library services and resources
and
* a Database ROI Calculator that shows the value of your book and journal collections

It's important that you be using tools like these and collecting data to defend your budgets!