Improving Practices. Statistical Standards in Global Libraries

Abstract

Library standards are recommended ways of working in libraries; they often differ from practices, or the ways libraries actually work. The purpose of standards is to improve practices. Standards are only interesting if they change the way librarians actually do their work. We may distinguish between active and passive standards. Nearly all standards are developed by committees that include practicing librarians. Active standards interact with their environments: they are openly discussed, widely applied and frequently revised by the library community. Passive standards are locked up in documents that few practitioners read or care about. The paper presents interaction between standards and practices in library statistics, with examples from IFLA, OCLC and ISO.