Developing performance indicators to evaluate organizational intellectual assets of Thai academic libraries.

Intellectual assets are strategic resources that underlie a library's sustainable growth.
Many library experts are striving to design indicators for measuring the intangible
sides of library organizations. However, very little effort has been made to develop
indicators with specific reference to intellectual assets. The purpose of this study is
to apply intellectual capital concepts to academic library settings by exploring types
of intellectual assets from a new perspective for library managers, explaining the
motivation behind an interest in intangible assessment, and developing indicators to
evaluate measurable surrogates for library intellectual assets.
The researcher selected the case study methodology to investigate the actual
development of indicators at three university libraries in Thailand. Using multiple
methods of data collection, document reviews and semi-structured interviews yielded
the case descriptions, key success factors associated with intellectual assets, and
initial intangible indicators. Small-scale surveys were sequentially undertaken to test
user acceptance of the suggested indicators. The case findings from within-case
analysis were compared to examine similar patterns across the three case libraries
that led to the formation of theoretical propositions and the modification of the
conceptual framework for developing intangible indicators.
The key findings from this study are as follows: (1) library collections and
services can be treated as an additional category of library intangibles because they
are derived from a combination of human, structural and relationship assets; (2) two
main motives for interest in intangible assessment are tracking progress on
knowledge management projects and supplementing library evaluation reports with
information on intangibles; and (3) most indicator users at the operations
management level place more emphasis on the indicators developed for assessing
human assets, as well as on collection and service assets.
This research makes a major contribution to knowledge on library performance
evaluation by providing the theoretically-informed, empirically-supported
propositions that intellectual capital reporting principles are relevant and applicable
to internal assessment practices in Thai academic libraries. These propositions may
be transferable to other information service units where their contextual conditions
are similar to the case study libraries.