Mariza Russo

Library performance management in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Applying DEA to a sample of university libraries in 2006‐2007

Purpose – This paper intends to illustrate an application of data envelopment analysis (DEA) to assess library performance from an efficiency standpoint.Design/methodology/approach – DEA modeling was applied to a convenience sample of 37 libraries affiliated to a federal university in Rio de Janeiro. Data were collected from the universitys managerial database and refer to three inputs – number of employees, area and number of volumes – and four outputs – consultations, loans, enrolments and (user) traffic. Markovian analysis of transitions between efficient and inefficient states along time allowed a long‐term distribution between those states to be computed.Findings – The retained DEA model provides a list of estimated scores that quantify efficiency status for each library unit and from which both rankings and operation plans can be determined for each unit to assist managers in their quest for library efficiency. In fact, (re)allocative measures, expressed as operation plans, indicate that, for each ...