Cost Analysis, Cost Recovery, Marketing and Fee-Based Services

This outstanding volume won the 1986 Ida and George Eliot Prize--awarded by the Medical Library Association for the work judged most effective in furthering medical librarianship. Library professionals review the controversy behind fee-for-service programs and provide a rationale for incorporating them into contemporary library philosophies of service. Some fee-based services are necessary for survival in a society that treats information as a marketable commodity; this comprehensive book gives practical advice on cost analysis, cost recovery and marketing of reference services, and presents information on establishing a fee-based information service, as well as examples of successful information service programs.

M Sandra Wood

Contents COST ANALYSIS OF REFERENCE SERVICES - Cost Analysis of Reference Services: An Overview - Cost Analysis of Online Search Services in an Academic Health Sciences Library - Cost Analysis of a Circuit Library Program - Cost Analysis of a Document Delivery Photocopy Service - COST RECOVERY FOR REFERENCE SERVICES - An Overview of Cost Recovery - The MEDLARS Pricing Algorithm - Online Search Services: A Strategy for Cost Recovery - The Entrepreneurial Hospital Library - Cost Recovery Effort in a Clinical Librarian Program - MARKETING REFERENCE SERVICES - Marketing Reference Services: Translating Selected Concepts Into Action for a Specific Practice Setting - Marketing Information Services Outside the Medical Center - The Marketing of Biomedical Information Service at the University of Minnesota: Creative Error Correction - FEE-FOR-SERVICE - Fee-for-Service in Publicly Supported Libraries: An Overview - Example of a Complex Fee-for-Service System - Implementing and Managing a Fee-Based Information Service in an Academic Library - Information Brokering M & S Style - Annotated Bibliography - Index