E-measures: a comprehensive waste of time?

Purpose: To provide a critique, some sources of data, and a broader conception for informing development of e-measures frameworks for use in academic library services. Approach: Suggests that the broader context for e-measurement is investigated and provides a critique of current thinking. Provides four additional sources or routes for improved measures, including scholarly communication methods, information literacy, developments in measuring library and e-service quality, and the critical success factors of serials staff. Develops a proposed framework for e-measures based on the balanced scorecard approach. Findings: Provides specific suggestions arising from the four sources for relevant e-measures, and provides a framework based on the balanced scorecard which incorporates these and other suggestions for data collection under the following perspectives: financial, customers, process and projects, staff development, and organisational learning and development. Value: The paper will be valuable to library directors and managers and library researchers interested in the field of performance measurement and evaluation of e-resources. It provides some original thinking about the problem and suggests some innovative techniques and approaches to addressing the need to develop effective and useful performance measurement frameworks.