Capability of Geographic Information System (GIS) in mapping of performance indicators at academic libraries

This study aims to determine the capabilities of GIS in mapping of library performance indicators at Tehran University of medical sciences and Shahid Beheshti University of medical sciences.
The descriptive research method was used to carry out this research. All central and college libraries in Tehran university of medical sciences and Shahid Beheshti university of medical sciences were selected in sampling. Selected six performance indicators in this study cover broad categories in the library various fields such as: facilities, staff, collections, and expenditures, that required data for calculating them gathered with questionnaire. Finally the data analysis was conducted using ArcGIS version 9.3.
Findings: ArcGIS software has capability of displaying performance indicators in the format clear images to conduct suitable analysis, in other words displaying these indicators in the form of graphs and tables not only makes analyzing difficult but also it is lacks the precision and generalization.
The maps applied for performance indicator analysis with GIS, like a road map to guide people according to their needs and respond to various questions, so they can extract much analysis from these maps; in addition, data analysis is just one of the GIS capabilities among the numerous capabilities