DEA-based performance evaluation of libraries: a systematic mapping study

Abstract

This paper employs a systematic mapping study for analysing publications on library performance evaluation with data envelopment analysis (DEA). The review is based on an extensive search through academic literature including the scientific data bases of Scopus and Web of Science. 44 articles published between 1997- 2018 were selected as core study. The results show that the published studies are mostly conducted by specialists in economics, management and engineering, but hardly by library and information science specialists. Interestingly, a large number of the studies were conducted in Taiwan and the United States with a specific focus on performance evaluation of university libraries. Findings of this study identify gaps in terms of the techniques, methods, and processes used for evaluating the performance of libraries. Identifying these gaps however, might help library science researches to pay further attention over Library Science and Information performance library evaluation. The study, further, identifies the key evaluation input and output variables for assessing libraries’ performance.