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Introduction
The global economic crisis and resulting budgetary pressures alongside the growth of freely available digital materials have provoked questions about the value of libraries in both the public and private sectors. Libraries have long collected input and output data, but increasingly library managers believe that budget allocators are demanding evidence of library service outcomes, their economic value for the individuals who use them and the society that support them and perhaps more importantly, the resulting impact on the community or organisation in which the service is located. As Town and Kyrillidou (2013) noted, the challenge of creating effective value and impact measures for library and information services has been a feature of library management for the last ten years. As a result, there is no shortage of studies focusing on, and trying to assess, the social and economic value and impact of libraries. Notable studies have been undertaken in Australia (State Library of Queensland, 2013), Spain (FESABID, 2014), England (British Library, 2004), Scandinavia (Aabo, 2005), Korea (Ko et al. , 2012) the USA (Bureau of Business Research IC² Institute, 2012) and Canada (Martin Prosperity Institute, 2013) using a range of methods discussed briefly below in the literature review. It would seem, therefore, that Poll (2012) is correct in her assertion that libraries have "developed and tested methods for identifying and proving their value for individual users and society". The recently published ISO 16439:2014, methods and procedures for assessing the impact of libraries is a single source that defines many of the terms used for measuring library impact and reviews four ways of measuring it (inferred evidence, solicited evidence, observed evidence and combined methods). It also includes a section on assessing the economic value of a library, offering suggestions for calculating a figure or ratio (Bach, 2014).
Yet few studies of impact assessment have been undertaken in New Zealand and those that have been are generally limited to evaluations of specific services in individual libraries. As a result, the project reported below was initiated after a request from the Library and Information Association of New Zealand Aotearoa and the Public Library Managers Network for fresh ideas to demonstrate the value of libraries in New Zealand. The project was funded under the Faculty Small Grants Scheme...