Efficiency of Slovenian Public General Libraries: A Data Envelopment Analysis Approach

Authors

  • Andrej Srakar Institute for Economic Research (IER) and Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana
  • Eva Kodrič-Dačić National University Library
  • Klemen Koman Institute for Economic Research (IER), Ljubljana
  • Damjan Kavaš Institute for Economic Research

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4335/15.3.559-581(2017)

Keywords:

public general libraries, Slovenia, financing, efficiency, clustering, data envelopment analysis

Abstract

In the article, we study financing and efficiency of Slovenian Public General Libraries. We employ a rich dataset of CEZAR – Centre for Development of Libraries for the years 2008-2014 for 58 libraries and use data envelopment analysis and regression methods to study the efficiency of libraries over the years. Our main results show that the problems for the libraries in this period did not lie in the lowered efficiency but more likely in other system requirements. We also provide a grouping of libraries following clustering analysis and show it had significant effects on the performance of the libraries.

Author Biography

  • PhD, Research Associate, IER, and Teaching Assistant (macroeconomics, econometrics), Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

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Published

2017-06-28

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