A Study On The Economic Evaluation Of Public Library: Based On Cost Benefit Analysis

As China increases investment in public libraries, how to measure the efficiency of the library became an important issue, because if they can convincingly prove their economic value, whether for the financial allocation from government or the public acceptance, was a powerful data support.Above all, this study introduced the cost-benefit analysis method from Public Economics for the purpose of assessing the economic value of public libraries. Through presenting the domestic and international research status of cost-benefit analysis, including the achievements of construction of cost-benefit analysis method and the empirical evaluation reports of application of cost-benefit analysis on foreign libraries, understood the theory and summarized the practical experience.Elaborating on the basis of the status quo, this study access to the public library economic valuation model from summarizing the theoretical and practical achievements of following six aspects object selection, method selection, framework establishment, method operation, computational model and basic principle.In the specific evaluation work, based on the public library economic valuation model, we determined the evaluation object and the evaluation method of Hangzhou library first of all. And then, we constructed the service-user matrix of Hangzhou Library, determined the alternatives and their cost to implement the consumer surplus method, designed the questionnaire and employed random sampling survey of 1500 users to implement the contingent valuation method, gathered the statistical data of various services, calculated the evaluation result. Finally, we compared the evaluation result of Hangzhou library with other foreign libraries.The original value of this study is a general model for the cost-benefit analysis of public libraries. The general model is the result of empirical evaluation in Hangzhou library. It will provide reference information for researchers to carry out further evaluation of the economic value of our library.