Editorial

Citation

Thornton, S. (2010), "Editorial", Performance Measurement and Metrics, Vol. 11 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/pmm.2010.27911caa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Performance Measurement and Metrics, Volume 11, Issue 3

In this issue once again we have papers from all over the world, from the USA to India, from Holland to Wales and from Greece to Pakistan.

We start with a paper from Ricardo Gomez at the University of Washington which is related to the “Landscape of public access to ICT in 25 countries” project he reported on in 2009 (Gomez et al., 2009). This time he describes the methodology and the criteria used to select the countries and local research partners, research design considerations, data analysis concepts, and the limitations of the study. These techniques and methods are eminently transferrable to other multi-national surveys, and provide an excellent example of how to organise and manage a massive multi-national project.

Gangan Prathap and Rekha Mittal present an interesting and innovative development of the Hirsch Index (h-index). Although the h-index was introduced in a publication-citation context, the idea has found applications in many source-item situations. In this article the authors describe the application of an extension to the h-index, the p-index, which they have applied to a subject-wise assessment of loan patterns. I was particularly impressed that Prathap’s first application of the p-index solution was to cricket, although this may need some degree of explanation to our readers in the USA.

A national survey of web statistics data collection tools and policies amongst cultural heritage institutions in The Netherlands has thrown up some very interesting results. Henk Voobij’s study was based on an initial questionnaire carried out in 2008. Using that as a starting point he conducted a survey of the respondents of that earlier study and followed this up with detailed interviews of a selection of these, and a detailed analysis of annual reports of related Dutch institutions.

The results give a picture of a fairly disjointed and uncoordinated approach across the country. Many different packages are used, and although an organisation’s year on year statistics may well be consistent and suitable for trend analysis, the issues he has identified indicate they could be off by up to 25 per cent, and unsuitable for cross-organisation comparison.

Allen Foster, Kirsten Ferguson-Boucher any Judy Broady-Preston give us an interesting concept paper which combines information behaviour, records management and organisation behaviour theory to develop an analytical tool to measure information and process in organisations. The resulting matrix, the Information Situation Scorecard, permits the assessment of information agent roles in the context of some strategic measures. While I personally find it interesting and stimulating, I am not 100 per cent convinced by it. I do not know why, but then that is what (I hope) this journal is about.

One of the papers I found particularly stimulating at QQML 2010 was that by Aristeidis Meletiou, the presenter who had the least distance to travel, being based in Chania itself. (I always felt somewhat cheated when presenting at international conferences in England. Another country or even another continent seems far more rewarding!) One of the significant movements over the last decade has been to pay far more attention to user satisfaction, with the growth of SERVQUAL, LibQUAL and other related tools. Crude year-on-year analyses of the results are often taken as a guide to how well remedial action has succeeded in meeting user requirements. However, user requirements change over time and it requires a more complex analysis to track these changes in relation to improvements, and this is what Aristeidis demonstrates using a multi-criteria preference disaggregation approach.

Finally, Alia Arshad and Kanwal Ameen present the results of a SERVQUAL survey, the first of its type to be applied at the University of Punjab: a good case study of its type, which identified areas requiring remedial action. The results are being used to inform a total quality management programme with improvement of those library services being the next step of that process.

I hope you enjoy reading these papers as much as I have editing them.

Steve Thornton