What is EBSM®

Evidence Based Stock Management (EBSM) is a complete library stock improvement methodology which takes historical and current information about stock use, which is currently being held in the local Library Management System database.

It uses this information, along with local target setting as its evidence base, to assist librarians in making the management of stock more effective, more customer focused, less wasteful, and more measured and performance based.

The power of the methodology comes from the comparison between the locally set targets and the current situation, and then the provision of EBSM Action Plans to help drive performance towards targets.

What EBSM does not do is remove decision making from librarians and turn them into re-active automatons. It provides a series of decision support tools to help librarians decide on the best actions to take with current stock and to guide on new stock decisions.

The need for EBSM has been clear for some time, and has been well documented over the years since its inception.

Today there are a number of EBSM practitioners across the globe who are delivering best value to their customers through the continuous process of stock performance improvement that EBSM enables. EBSM has evolved steadily from its beginnings where a smaller but effective toolset was used to drive performance improvement.

This website - EBSM.com, the Definitive guide to the EBSM methodology - describes in detail what EBSM is today, how it works, how it should be followed to get best value from the resources deployed to it, and how it can be tailored for a specific Library Service.

This guide is, then, the EBSM handbook, which should be the reference point of choice for librarians looking to excel in the discipline of Library Stock Performance.