Performance Evaluation of the Public Libraries in USA Using Data Envelopment Analysis

This paper examines how well the public libraries in each state of USA combine their resources to support the largest amount of possible services to the community. It also investigates how to improve the performance of the inefficient libraries at state level. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) technique is employed for this research purpose. BCC model is utilized in order to consider the size effect. The DEA results indicate that all states operate fairly efficiently on the whole although there is still a little room for improvement. The analysis also provides the set of target values for improvement for those states that were found inefficient so that the inefficient states can reach the best practice frontier. It is the first time to introduce DEA to measure the public library performance at the state level in USA. The results provide the guidance for government budgeting process. For those states that do not perform efficiently in terms of public library service, our results give the strong indication on how to use the minimum budget and manpower to maintain the same level of public library services.