Financial programming and multicriteria decision analysis: one more tool on librarians’ hands?

Abstract

As the economics of libraries become more and more complicated the libraries’ interest in economic and financial analysis is never been more crucial. This paper examines the difficulties associated with the application of financial analysis. Financial programming and financial planning models for libraries are also been discussed. The library’s state of the art and its economic relations are mentioned along with the peculiarities of the product “information” and some principles on its cost measurement. The Decision support systems can provide the forms, which decisions could take in order to be considered as alternative solutions of the settled problems, relatively to the criteria, which are chosen and the weights that every criterion takes. The proposed method is the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) that aids to non-qualitative criteria to be quantified and measured.