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Introduction
The global financial crisis we now are experiencing threatens citizens' welfare and jobs, and thus their possibilities to access and use private and public services. The research field "economics" is central and much debated these days.
Library economics has been part of the research field library management from the start of library and information science. From the 1980s and onwards, there was a growing interest in a special theme within library economics, that focused on the economic pressure on the library budgets as part of the increasing economic pressure of the public sector as a whole. This research interest was in part a reaction to the Thatcher-era and the right-wing politics that increased in West-Europe from the 1980s. Now a new development can be seen. During the last ten years a new research field has evolved from the wider research area library management and economics. This new field is library valuation research, and the number of library valuation studies and return on investment studies has increased considerably during the last years. Why is it so?
Public libraries receive a high proportion of public funds for cultural activities and they, therefore, meet demands for more accountability. They need to prove how the taxpayers' money is used to benefit both the individual citizens and the local communities. Academic libraries, school libraries, and special libraries in different businesses meet similar types of demands, being asked for performance measurement, cost justifications, and return on investment from the administration of their university, school, or enterprise. These demands have been strengthening due to increasing economic pressure. There is no doubt that the pressure will increase considerably now. Owing to the financial crisis, the Prime Minister of Norway in January 2009 warned of a stern budget situation in the municipalities, possibly affecting both schools and elderly care. Public libraries are also a public task, and in Norway a municipality task, and risk being squeezed in the competition for scarce public funds. In tight economic times people are especially conscious of spending their tax dollars wisely. Therefore, the need is strong to value or assess the libraries, i.e. to get an estimate of the worth, and even the monetary worth, of the libraries. This is the background for the evolving library valuation...