Analyzing the benefits of using a document repository to aid decision-making in the field of culture.

The MESOC Toolkit is a free and open-access online service used to aid the measurement of the societal value and impact of culture, currently under development as part of the MESOC (Measuring the Social Dimension of Culture) project. The goal of establishing transition variables that serve as impact measurement indicators is aided by an online document repository system of thematic publications (i.e., a collection of documents on the societal value and impact of cultural policies). It allows the users to input, manage, and search extensive document data based on the relevant criteria. The paper at hand paper describes the rationale behind the online document repository of the MESOC Toolkit, its implementation, and main functionalities. Furthermore, it offers an empirical evaluation of the benefits that such a system offers over non-automated procedures of document search and analysis. The results of the evaluation give way to the conclusion that there are time-saving and quality benefits for the users of the repository: efficiency in dealing with a large number of documents and quality in searching the documents using multiple criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]