Dr. Jeffrey Pomerantz receives OCLC/ALISE Library and Information Science Research Grant

Dr. Jeffrey Pomerantz, assistant professor at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has been awarded an OCLC/ALISE Library and Information Science Research Grant for 2006.

The award is provided by the OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Incorporated and OCLC Research, in collaboration with the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE). The purpose of the award is to recognize "the importance of research to the advancement of librarianship and information science."

Pomerantz will use the grant for "The Return on Investment of Collaborative Virtual Reference Service” project. The project will outline a study to quantify the Return on Investment (ROI) associated with the implementation of a collaborative virtual reference service. Pomerantz will use budgetary data from participating libraries and statistics about libraries' contributions to a collaborative virtual reference service.

Through his research, he will identify the impact that participating in this collaborative service has on participating libraries, in terms of the monetary and non-monetary costs and savings incurred by individual libraries and by the entire collaborative, and the factors that affect the ROI for libraries and the collaborative. The findings of the study will enable more rational economic decision-making by libraries about their participation in collaborative virtual reference services, and the conditions under which this participation may be negotiated.

The results of his research will be published in the public domain and made available on the OCLC Research Web site. Pomerantz will also be invited to present his research report at the 2007 ALISE Conference.