The Value of Corporate Libraries

I read an article from Library Quarterly, titled "Corporate library impact: theoretical approach by William Edgar. It is about corporate libraries and their contribution to their parent firm and whether or not these libraries contribute to corporate wealth.
In one study, thirteen corporate libraries provided information on background, staff, collections, services, physical facilities, and financial resources but did not address how these libraries impacted their parent corporation. Another study found that over two-thirds of respondents did not answer when asked which corporate library services added the most value to the company. The value of the corporate library and its effects on the corporate environment needs to be determined.
What corporations want is savings in time and money. Professionals in corporations spend a lot of time reading information. Without a corporate library, getting that information would take time that could be spent reading. Having the information available would also improve their quality of work which could affect savings by the corporation.
Corporate libraries usually have specific services they provide such as research and product development. When these specific activities are changed, the library does not seem as important, especially to senior management. What is unfortunate for the libraries is that senior management are the ones less likely to be users of the library and are more likely to be the ones to cut costs by eliminating them. In these cases, it would be beneficial to corporations and their information centers to distribute the decision making process of eliminating libraries to management that actually use them.
Julie Krehbiel