Best practices is a concept that migrated from the business community to the academic world as part of knowledge management. 

Academic organizations gather information about the practices of other academic units of comparable size and scope.  They compare the outside organizations with each other and with themselves to identify the best practices in their areas of interest. 

The objective is to adopt identified best practices in the institution doing the survey for the purpose of improving performance. 

ARTICLES:

Briscoe, Georgia, Karen Selden, and Cheryl Rae Nyberg, "The Catalog vs. the Home Page?  Best Practices in Connecting to Online Resources," Law Library Journal vol. 95, no. 2, 2003, pages 151-174

French, Patricia Sheldahl, et al., "The Shared Cataloging Program of the California Digital Library," Serials Review, vol. 28, no. 1, Spring 2002, pages 4-12

Caplan, Priscilla, "Electronic Journal--Best Practices," Information Today, vol. 17, issue 5, May 2000, page 20

Hawthorne, Darlene, "Administrative Metadata to Support the Acquisition of Continuing E-Resources," Serials Review, vol. 29, issue 4, Winter 2003, Pages 276-281

The process of identifying best practices is called benchmarking.  An identified best practice in one organization sets a benchmark for comparable units in the institution doing the best practices survey.

ARTICLE:

Davies, Bryn, "The ASVIN Project: A Study of Electronic and Printed Veterinary Science Journals in the UK and Ireland," Health Information & Libraries Journal, March 2002, Vol. 19 Issue 1, p. 21, 12 pages

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Another method of identifying and evaluating best practices is evidence-based practice.  Evidence-based practice is a concept that migrated from the health sciences to medical librarianship.  It is in the early stages of being adopted in general library and information practice. 

Evidence-based practice consists of identifying and comparing all of the available research evidence on a particular practice.  A practice can then be implemented, improved, or discontinued based on the existing evidence. 

Implemented practices that are studied can  be improved or discontinued in ongoing iterations of the process, with the goal of continuous quality improvement.

ARTICLE:

Gallagher, John, "Evidence-Based Librarianship: Utilizing Data from All Available Sources to Make Judicious Print Cancellation Decisions," Library Collections, Acquisitions, and Technical Services, v. 29 no2 (2005) p. 169-79

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Effective Practices as Best Practices

"Best Practices" is a very specific concept, and the identifying of best practices is done through specific information gathering and comparison methods

The term "best practices" is often used interchangeably with other terms such as "effective practices" or "guidelines" or "standards."

Practices that are identified anecdotally as "effective," rather than through a rigorous comparison process as "best", can still be useful for practitioners.

ARTICLE:

Hahn, Karla, "Triennial Serials Review Process," Effective Practices in Academic and Research Librarianship, Association of College and Research Libraries, American Library Association, http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlissues/effectiveprac/acrleffectivemaryland.cfm

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Standards as Best Practices

The National Institute of Standards (NISO) is developing a set of standards for e-resources called the Shared E-Resource Understanding, or SERU.  The current set of documents related to SERU is available on the NISO Web site:  http://www.niso.org/committees/SERU/index.html

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