The University of California Libraries: A Plan for Development (1977)

goals of the library system on a multi-year basis, will be produced,
and once approved, the recommendations will become the basis for the
University's library budget requests.
The results of recommendations which are implemented must also be
monitored to insure that the desired effects do in fact take place. As
suggested in Chapter IV, the library system proposed can only succeed
if it is able to respond to users' needs within an appropriate time.
Furthermore, it must be able to do so in a sufficiently high percentages
of cases that users are convinced of the system's ability to perform as
intended.
The actual performance of all elements of the system, therefore,
will be measured on a continuing basis, and changes will be instituted
when it is clear that they are needed to meet the desired performance
goals. By their nature, many parts of the system will provide as a
matter of course the information needed to judge their performance.
Statistics on many activities are already kept, and the automation
systems proposed will provide an enormously helpful body of additional
information. In the last analysis, however, the best judge of the
system's performance is the person for whom it is designed, the user.
Periodic surveys will therefore be made to ascertain the extent to which
the service rendered by the library system is perceived by the users to
be satisfactory, and to pinpoint areas where further improvement is
necessary.
The process, in short, must come full circle. The library usersfaculty,
students, and staff alike--must contribute on a continuing
basis to the development of the library plan, assist in its revision,
and judge the results of its recommendations. Only thus can the plan
fairly reflect the users' needs, and only thus can there be a library
system of which the University can be proud.
v
Stephen R. Salmon
Executive Director of
Universitywide Library Planning