Using Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing to Identify Best Practices in Academic Libraries

In the current competitive and dynamic environment, libraries must remain agile and flexible, as well as open to new ideas and ways of working. Based on a comparative case study of two academic libraries in Belgium, this research study investigates the opportunities of using Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing (TDABC) to benchmark library processes. To this end, two major research questions are addressed: 1) Can TDABC be used to enhance process benchmarking in libraries? 2) Do results at activity level provide additional insights compared to macro results in a process benchmarking? We first start by describing the TDABC implementation. Then, we discuss and compare the workflow of 10 library processes covering the four principal library functions: acquisition, cataloging, circulation and document delivery. Next, based on the benchmarking exercise, we report and discuss potential processes and performance improvements that can be realized from using library time and costs information, in particular concerning the two libraries analyzed. We conclude this article by discussing the advantages of using TDABC as a tool to enhance process benchmarking in libraries.