Managing Cultural Assets from a Business Perspective

Additional copies are available for $15.00 from the address noted above. Orders must be prepaid, with checks made payable to the Council on Library and Information Resources. Laura Price is a senior manager in the Public Services–Assurance Practice of KPMG LLP in Washington D.C. Ms. Price provides audit and advisory services to Federal government clients in both the legislative and executive branches of the government. She worked closely with the Library of Congress in developing the business risk model described in this report. Abby Smith is director of programs at the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). Before joining CLIR in 1997, Ms. Smith was assistant to the associate librarian for library services at the Library of Congress. In this capacity, she worked with KPMG LLP to develop the business risk model. This report describes how the Library of Congress developed and implemented a plan for greater accountability over its collections. It is, in one sense, a case study. However, although the details of this study are unique to a single institution, the report sets out a model that can easily be adapted to every type of library, no matter how small, how specialized, or how atypical. The Library of Congress found itself in the awkward, if familiar, position of answering such questions from its oversight body as " How much are your collections worth? " " How do you determine how much to invest in security (or cataloging, or preservation, or collection development)? " and " What if you digitize your collections? " The business risk model described in this report was designed to help Library management answer these questions. The role of collections and the funding it takes to make them productive are being called into question these days for several reasons. First, libraries no longer must have physical custody of an item—own it, in other words—to serve it to a patron. With the growth of interlibrary lending and the spread of networked resources, libraries have begun to uncouple collections and services. This development coincides with the increasing demand by funding organizations to manage library services and collections in a businesslike way. This notion is just as strange to libraries as was the notion of virtual collections 20 years ago. Given how little data we have about the relationship between access to collections and the productivity of scholars, the achievements of students, or the general enlightenment of …