The Cost Effectiveness of Book Purchasing of Institute for Population and Social Research Library, Mahidol University, Fiscal Years 2018-2022

Abstract

The objectives of this research are to study a budget and the number of books purchased, and analyze the cost effectiveness of books purchased by Institute for Population and Social Research Library, Mahidol University, fiscal years 2018-2022, classified by fiscal year, category, and, language used in books. A sample in this research was books of Institute for Population and Social Research Library as the library resource that were purchased and created as a bibliographic record in Sierra, a library automation system. The tool used for data collection was purchased book record form created by using Microsoft Excel program for collecting data that was analyzed by descriptive statistics. 

The results revealed that 1) the budget used for the purchased books in fiscal years 2018-2022 was 690,560.39 baht in total, and an average was 138,112.08 per year. Fiscal year 2019 spent the budget for purchasing the most. The total of purchased books were 397 as the foreign language books were purchased more than Thai language books. Books the library spent the budget for purchasing the most were on ‘class H: Social Sciences’ classification that collected foreign and Thai language books. An average money spent per a book was 1,902.45 baht. 2) For cost-effectiveness issue, the books purchasing in fiscal year 2019 was the most cost effective in book purchasing. For the issue of language used in books, the purchased Thai language books were more cost effective than foreign language books. Books on ‘class C: Auxiliary Sciences of History’ classification were the most cost effective because of their lowest break-even price 34.57 baht per time. From the result, if the library needs to decrease break-even for book purchasing to the maximum cost effectiveness, a promotion plan for purchased books usage should be done more to be more cost-effective. and the result is used for efficiently considering resource purchasing to meet the users’ needs then.