A kaleidoscope of possibilities: strategies for assessing human capital in libraries

Purpose The purpose of paper one of the two‐article series exploration of human capital assessment is to examine the strategies by which library administrators can assess and benefit the human capital performance of their library and to lay the groundwork for the discussion of the strategic challenges of assessing and valuing human capital in article two. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses a literature review to identify potential strategies and metrics for library administrators to assess human capital productivity. Findings Human capital is an increasingly essential element of organizational performance assessment. Effectively assessing library staff expenditures (which generally receives the largest expenditure allocations within the library's budget) and the resulting performance generated by the staff, who are the primary knowledge tools and providers of the library's services, is an ever increasing possibility to account for greater amounts of tangible and intangible organizational performance. Library administrators have multiple options for developing effective strategies and metrics by which to assess their libraries human capital performance. Originality/value Developing an effective human capital assessment process as a standard component of the library's performance and budgetary assessment processes would benefit libraries and their administrators by increasing the organizational performance information available for resource allocation decisions regarding library staff development, recruitment, and retention in the larger overall management decision making and planning processes.