[Publib] RE: question for Mass. PubLibbers

[Kevin Okelly]

Does anyone remember a pie chart that appeared in the Boston Globe
*probably* within the last two months that showed a breakdown of each
dollar spent by the Massachusetts state government--e.g., how many cents
of each dollar were spent on schools, roads, etc? 

I am trying to track it down and if anyone could cough up an approximate
date it would be most helpful.

In any case--Happy New Year!

Kevin

Kevin O'Kelly
Reference and Cataloging Librarian
Somerville Public Library
79 Highland Ave.
Somerville, MA 02143
(617)-623-5000


-----Original Message-----
From: "Sanderson, James W." <jsanderson at nngov.com>
To: George Bergstrom <vcpl.reference.librarian at gmail.com>, "Lockhart,
William  S." <lockhartws at elpasotexas.gov>
Cc: "LIBREF-L at listserv.kent.edu" <LIBREF-L at listserv.kent.edu>,
"publib at webjunction.org" <publib at webjunction.org>
Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2008 13:31:25 -0500
Subject: RE: [Publib] Cost per Reference Transaction

> This can be even more complex.  In many libraries the duties of the
> reference staff go beyond reference, they may well do collection
> development for the circulating collection, programming, web site work
> etc.  Thus a portion of their salary is non-reference related and needs
> to be taken out of the calculation.  I suppose you could do an hourly
> average of the departments salaries and then divide by the length of an
> average transaction to get an estimate.
> Then again what sources were used, what was the initial cost of the
> source? Ongoing costs for subscriptions?
> 
> 
> James W. Sanderson
> Supervising Librarian
> West Avenue Library
> Newport News Public Library
> 2907 West Avenue
> Newport News, Virginia. 23607
> (757) 247-8505
> (757) 247-2344
> www.nngov.com/library
> From: publib-bounces at webjunction.org
> [mailto:publib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of George Bergstrom
> Sent: Wednesday, December 31, 2008 12:22 PM
> To: Lockhart, William S.
> Cc: LIBREF-L at listserv.kent.edu; publib at webjunction.org
> Subject: Re: [Publib] Cost per Reference Transaction
> 
> Bill,
> 
>      What a fascinating question.  Lets take a look at it, not knowing
> the particulars of your library, who is asking the question or what
> they may want to know/how it will be used...  you will get very
> different numbers depending on what you use.
> 
> If you use salary:
> 
> Say the total salary of the department is $600,000 (not counting
> benefits) and the total transactions is 200,000/yr then you get $3 per
> transaction
> 
> Say the total materials budget is only $400,000 then you get $2 per
> transaction
> 
> But the transaction is never completed by just the new books from 2008
> (or for that mater the entire yearly materials budget...)  so my
> initial gut would be something like using the value of the entire
> reference collection, the value of the salaries of the entire reference
> staff, and possibly adding some value for the internet and
> infrastructure...
> 
> So if salary is $600,000 and new materials is $400,000 and the rest of
> the collection is $1,000,000 (depreciation) then you have $10 per
> transaction.  Now if you then added in the value of the staff benefits,
> and the other infrastructure I could see this easily doubling to $20 or
> more per transaction.
> 
> Now we come to the who wants the numbers and for what purpose.  If
> admin wants the numbers for budgeting purposes, then maybe the smaller
> numbers are better (look we can answer each question for $1 each!)  but
> if they are trying to find a number for promotion of the
> service/possible bond measures then the bigger numbers seem to look
> better (look if we charged for our service per transaction it would be
> $20 each, but you get it for the bargain price of  $x per $1000 of
> property value...)
> 
> Thinking about it in these terms should help you identify what
> components to use in your equation, and hopefully help justify your
> choices.
> 
> -George
> On Wed, Dec 31, 2008 at 11:28 AM, Lockhart, William S.
> <lockhartws at elpasotexas.gov<mailto:lockhartws at elpasotexas.gov>> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Please excuse the cross posting.  I have been asked to find a formula
> for the average cost of a reference transaction for our system.  We are
> establishing a series of benchmarks to represent patron use and cost of
> our system.  Has any public library used this statistic for this
> purpose and if so what variables did you use to accurately depict the
> cost of the transaction?  We have a count of all of our reference
> transactions but I do not know what monetary values to use; staff
> salary, reference materials budget, total budget etc.  I have been
> researching this for awhile now and have not had much luck.  Any help
> you can provide me would be appreciated. Thank You,
> 
> Bill Lockhart
> 
> 
> 
> Bill Lockhart
> 
> Head of Reference
> 
> El Paso Public Library
> 
> (915)543-5451
> 
> lockhartws at elpasotexas.gov<mailto:lockhartws at elpasotexas.gov>
> --
> George C. A. Bergstrom
> Business Reference Librarian
> Management & Economics Library
> Purdue University
> Lafayette, IN 47907
> 
> (765) 494 - 2918