Calculating a return on investment for libraries has grown in popularity over the past ten years. Although technology, provided by vendors and homegrown sources allows libraries to demonstrate monetary value, there has been little attention paid to the cultural implications for pursuing this kind of assessment. This presentation will focus on the broader implications that ROI has for the library community and consider some of the potential risks that pursing ROI has for institutions. Higher Education has entered into an era that demands accounting for everything. Culturally, we increasingly ask what the value of something is without much regard as to why we need an expressed metric of value in the first place. As the public perception of libraries continues to evolve, it is important that librarians consider how and why they are participating in systems that require an expression of monetary value.
