Effectiveness and Efficiency

Today, I took my sisters on their final trip to the Mall of America. In an attempt to find the best parking spot (and believe me, that is more difficult then one might believe on a Monday afternoon), we wandered around for about 10 minutes, finally settling on the opposite side of the original entrance point. Walking in the door, however, we noted that I'd parked right beside the exact store we needed.

Efficient? Absolutely not. Effective? Apparently so.

I often talk to my students about efficiency and effectiveness in terms of research, and I think that it is an important lesson for the public, so I'm sharing it with you. The public, that is.

First, what does it mean to be effective? The simplest answer may be that you are successful in producing the desired outcome or consequence. In some cases, effectiveness may mean that you are simply successful in producing. However, in the business and academic worlds, effectiveness is tagged with a measurement, or scale: just because you produce a paper does not mean that it is effective (i.e., successful in receiving an "A").

Efficiency is a different matter altogether, although its definition is found on the very next page: to be efficient, one is capable of doing what may be required. I would further tag that efficiency is also a matter of scale: You are more efficient if you are capable of doing what is required in a shorter amount of time then what is expected or, even, average. Therefore, to be efficient in writing a paper is finishing it in Week 6 when it is actually due in Week 8.

As you may be able to see by these definitions, efficiency and effectiveness may run side by side to one another, and never the twain shall meet. In some cases, it is not your best move to be both effective and efficient (although, I believe these cases are more strategic and political than anything else). But back to research - the entire goal of research is to be both efficient and effective. My librarianship philosophy is the balance of effectiveness and efficiency.

To be an effective researcher, one most be able to locate and utilize the highest quality resources for a project. To be an efficient resources, one most locate those resources in a period of time that does not lead to stress, frustration, or despair. In the case of research, if you are not efficient, then your effectiveness will not matter, because your late point deductions will overshadow any credit you may have received for the quality of your work. Likewise, if you were efficient but not effective, you wouldn't receive credit for quality (in fact, you may not receive credit at all, depending on your lack of quality).

From a library-marketing perspective, I think that many librarians could sell this point to their patrons, albeit in a slightly more subtle way. Most people strive to reduce chaos in their lives. The librarian who can reach out to the patron's logical soul, and bring the point home that a librarian embodies effectiveness and efficiency, the more likely that librarian will be to win the patron over to the Force.