SUMMARY FOR ARTICLE

this project was commissioned by the yorkshire museums libraries & archives council ymlac in order to increase ymlacs and the archive domains knowledge and understanding of the methodologies / approaches available to undertake economic and social impact assessment. impact evaluation: the archive domain as yet there has been little work completed specifically on the social and economic impact of archive services which may be indicative not only of the relatively recent shift in focus of the archival raison dtre from the collections themselves to user needs and aspirations but also of the sheer complexity of determining what the impacts might be the level at which these can reasonably be measured and actually conducting the evaluative work. archive network wales: project evaluation report of the findings of an online user survey archives & records council wales conducted as part of an evaluation of the project to determine how well it had met the requirements of the partners users and other stakeholders. although the findings from surveys such as best value reviews do point to areas of potential social and economic impact as with much of the data drawn from domainspecific studies the evidence is by no means clear-cut. advantage/disadvantages cba would seem to be a good technique for comparing options particularly where these may be different in scale and budget transforming social factors into monetary terms and evaluating the best possible outcome based on comparable financial data.