Information and documentation. Quality assessment for national libraries

National libraries as well as any other progressive institutions have to assess the results of their performance. Depending on the type, functions, structure, areas of activities, organizational and financial methods, any national library can test wide sets of performance indicators consistent with its mission. Those indicators may differ from the indicators being tested by other national libraries. Quite often national libraries can also use additional indicators if financial/sponsoring organizations or target user groups etc. require this.The paper considers the methods and procedures for measuring quantitative indicators of national libraries’ performance according to the new international standard ISO 21248:2019 “Information and documentation: Quality assessment for national libraries”, which is partially based upon the ISO 11620:2008 standard “Information and documentation. Library performance indicators”. The author presents specific examples for calculating indicators using formulas and detailed description of steps for calculation of indicators depending on the library mission and goals. Along with qualitative indicators, the new standard recommends to use qualitative indicators to assess the impact of national libraries not only on their users, but also on society as a whole. In recent years, libraries have developed and probated methods to justify their importance. One of those methods is user surveying by means of special questionnaires made on the basis of ISO 16439:2014 standard “Information and documentation. Methods and procedures for assessing the impact of libraries” and circulated by libraries among their users to educe and differentiate interests of different user groups to provide them with subsequent target service.

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The Effects of Audit Review Format on Review Team Judgments

Auditing A Journal of Practice & Theory ◽

10.2308/aud.2009.28.1.95 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 28 (1) ◽

pp. 95-111 ◽

Cited By ~ 45

Author(s):

Christopher P. Agoglia ◽

Richard C. Hatfield ◽

Joseph F. Brazel

Keyword(s):

Quality Assessment ◽

Audit Quality ◽

Mediation Analyses ◽

Face To Face ◽

Audit Review ◽

Documentation Quality ◽

Review Team ◽

Workpaper Review ◽

Insight Into

SUMMARY: The promulgation of standards (e.g., PCAOB 2004b; IFAC 2008b) highlights the importance of workpaper documentation quality and its influence on audit quality. Our study matches audit workpaper preparers with reviewers to examine how alternative workpaper review methods affect sequential audit review team judgments through their impact on preparer workpaper documentation. While reviewers maintain the option of reviewing workpapers on site (“face-to-face review”), they can now also perform their reviews electronically from remote locations (“electronic review”) because of technological advancements such as email and electronic workpapers. Recent research has found that review mode can affect the judgments of auditors preparing the workpapers. Our study extends the literature by examining the extent to which review mode (electronic versus face-to-face) affects the quality of documentation in the workpapers and whether reviewers are able to discern and compensate for these documentation quality issues. Our results indicate that reviewers' judgments are ultimately affected by the form of review expected by their preparer. We test two alternative mediation models to provide insight into why the review format affects reviewer judgment quality. Mediation analyses suggest that the effect of review mode on reviewer judgments is mediated by a documentation quality assessment gap. Specifically, with electronic review, reviewers' burden to recognize and compensate for lower-quality documentation was generally greater, often resulting in lower-quality reviewer judgments than when the mode of review was face-to-face. These results suggest that the effect of review mode can persist to the reviewer's judgment through its influence on preparer workpaper documentation and the resulting documentation quality assessment gap.

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