Impact of library spending on the research output of the institution. A study of leading management institutes across India
| Date | 14 November 2017 |
| Pages | 437-454 |
| Published date | 14 November 2017 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/LM-12-2016-0092 |
| Author | Shivendra Singh,Ramesh Pandita |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Librarianship/library management,HR in libraries,Library strategy,Library promotion |
Impact of library spending on the
research output of the institution
A study of leading management
institutes across India
Shivendra Singh
Baba Farid University of Health Sciences, Faridkot, India, and
Ramesh Pandita
Central Library, Baba Ghulam Shah Badshah University, Jammu, India
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact and role of libraries of the Institutes of
Management in India in their research output. The study is based on the seven point performance evaluation
parameter, whereby each individual library has been ranked on the basis of aggregate performance against
each individual parameter. Some of the key parameters evaluated, include, preference of resource
procurement namely, electronic or print, utilisation of library budget towards the procurement of print and
electronic resources, average fund utilisation on resource procurement against each published research article
and average fund utilisation on resource procurement against each faculty member. Research output against
each faculty member and various other similar aspects have been evaluated.
Design/methodology/approach –The study is limited to the management institutes of India, but the
findings can be generalised to assess omit it the overall trend across the management institutes in general and
India in particular. The study is based on 2016 ranking list of Institutesof Management in India, compiled and
released by the Ministry of Human Resource and Development, Govt. of India for the period 2012-2013, 2013-
2014 and 2014-2015.
Findings –From the data analysis, it emerged that almost three-fourth of the library budget in the leading
Management Institutes across India is being spent on the procurement of e-documents, mostly in the form of
subscription of online journals. On average 1.18 research articles have been published by each
faculty member during the period of study from each institute under study, with an average annual
institutional research output of 19.63 research articles. In terms of resource allocation, on average
Indian Rupees (INR) 0.986/million has been spent by each institutional library on the resource procurement
against each published research article, and INR1.166/million has been spent on the resource
procurement against each faculty member.
Practical implications –The study is an attempt to seek correlation between the money spend on the
procurement of resources and its direct impact on the research output of that particular institution.
Originality/value –The study is original and first of its kind, undertaken in India.
Keywords India, Libraries, Library budget, Management institutes, Library ranking, Research output,
Resource procurement, e-Resources, p-Resources
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
The ranking of institutions and organisations has become a worldwide practice and the
research and educational institutions are no exception to it. It has become a very common
practice across the world to rank academic and research institutes. The practice of ranking
academic institutes was more prevalent in the Europe, America and the Australia (Healey,
2008), but, of late the practice of ranking the institutes has spread to other partsof the world
and so has Ministry of Human Resource and Development, Govt., India has taken a lead in
this directionby releasing the rankinglist of country leading academicand research institutes.
Although critics are of the view that raking of the institutes is more about numbers, but,
one cannot undermine the impact which these rankings have over the functioning of an
academic institutions, especially management institutes. In fact, it won’t be inappropriate to
say that management institutes were the first to start the practice of grading or ranking the
Library Management
Vol. 38 No. 8/9, 2017
pp. 437-454
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0143-5124
DOI 10.1108/LM-12-2016-0092
Received 9 December 2016
Revised 11 April 2017
Accepted 13 April 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0143-5124.htm
437
Leading
management
institutes
across India
institutes, which ultimately resulted into creating a new trend of campus placement of
students with fat salary packages. Seeking admission in a highly ranked management
institute by a student is more about securing the future and reaping dividends all one’s life.
Institutional rankings have proved instrumental in improving the state of affair of the
highly ranked institutes.
The ranking of an academic or a research institution is based on reviewing the quality
parameters followed by its various sub-institutions over a period of time. Accordingly, the
library is one such integral and indispensable sub-institution of a larger institution,
which contributes in its own in shaping the larger institution by providing improved
services. The ranking of these sub-institutions are equally important to assess their role in
contributing towards the overall ranking of the parent institutes or the umbrella institutes.
The ranking of libraries has become equally important for the fact that libraries as
sub-institutions do not receive the attention they deserve given the rolethese sub-institutions
play in teaching and research activities of their respective institutes.
The growing keenness to rank the institutes has pushed the researchers in each era to
evaluate educational, technical and other research institutions on the basis of their
performance by evaluating them on different parameters. Accordingly, in the present study
attempt has been made to analyse the library as an important parameter in the overall
ranking of an academic or research institution. To undertake the present study, twenty
leading Institutes of Management across India have been chosen to evaluate the resources
and services of their libraries on seven different parameters. The libraries under study have
been chosen from a list of 50 leading Institutes of Management in India, the ranking list
released by the Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MHRD), Govt., of India on
4 April 2016 (National Institute Ranking Framework (NIRF), 2016).
Related literature
Researchers in the past have also ranked the libraries by evaluating their performance on
different parameters. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) with the view to
help researchers to increase their efficiency and impact of their research, developed a
Research on Investment (ROI) model for their libraries. The main purpose of creating this
model was to help researchers and other faculty members increase their research
productivity and to help them in seeking grant funds. The concept of ROI is to quantify the
returns to the institution by making investments in the library (Luther, 2008). To undertake
the pilot study at UIUC researchers collected ten years data over library budget, grants
received, number of faculty members, etc., to determine the value of the library and its
resources to faculty members.
The concept of university investments was studied by Tenopir et al. (2010) in nine
different university libraries across different regions of the world by using the ROI
methodology developed by Luther to assess the applicability of methods in academic
research libraries across the world (Luther, 2008). The researchers found that libraries help
the institutions in improving grant proposals and attracting grant income. The researchers
also discussed about the local factors like subject focus, funding source, etc. influence the
ROI for grant income of each individual institution library. ROI is equally influenced by the
goals of the individual institution. The researchers found that institutional administration is
equally concerned about attracting and retaining the productive faculty as a long term goal
to improve the prestige of the institution. Apart from helping with mobilising grants, the
researchers also observed that there are other values, be it the value of library collection,
supporting academic and research activities, which cannot be underestimated.
Rankings or a statistical comparison drawn among institutes makes them more
accountable, believes (Goldstein and Spiegelhalter, 1996). The researchers also suggested of
adopting of performance measuring evaluation techniques to reflect the existing difference
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