It's been a busy few days on the ERIL-L listserv, and since I'm up to my elbows in programming RFIDs and tagging our reserve collection with them, I figured I'd share some of the more interesting bits:
Mathematicians Critique Journal Rankings
In an unrelated but just as interesting post:
Primary Research Group has published The Survey of Academic Libraries 2008-
09 Edition, ISBN #1-57440-102-5. The Survey of Academic Libraries, 2008-09 Edition is based on data from 75 college libraries in the United States and Canada. Data is broken out by size and type of college, as well as for public and private institutions, to allow for easier benchmarking. The report’s more than 300 tables of data present findings about trends in staffing and salaries, budgets, grants and endowments, special collections, content and materials spending, use of e-books and online services, capital budgets library building renovation and facilities management, information literacy, and many other issues of interest to academic librarians.Some of the report’s findings are:
For the libraries in the sample the mean rate of growth in content spending in nominal terms was only 1.75% from the 2006-07 to 2007-08 academic year.
Spending actually declined for the public colleges in the sample and grew only at about the rate of inflation for the private colleges. The expected rate of increase in spending for the 2008-09 academic year is only 1.66%. Private colleges in the sample had a mean expected increase of 3.1%, slightly less than the expected rate of inflation, while the public colleges essentially foresaw an increase of less than 1/10th of 1 percent, a decline in real terms of about 3.5%.The libraries in the sample spent a mean of $456,238 for content accessed online in the 2008-09 academic year; the major research universities in the sample averaged more than $3.4 million in such expenditures. Spending per student for online information for colleges with fewer than 1,100 students FTE was $190.15 per student, while for colleges with more than 4,401 FTE per student spending averaged $115.04 for online information. Generally, students at the larger colleges enjoy access to a greater range of databases at much lower cost.
Dramatically high spending by a handful of libraries on e-books tended to drastically skew the e-book spending norms. Median spending on e-books was only $5,000, meaning that half of all libraries in the sample spent more than this and half spent less than this amount. However, mean spending was $200,401, higher than the total for traditional book spending. A small percentage of libaries are spending huge sums on e-book and essentially transferring print book spending to e-book spending, but the trend is restricted to a small number of major libraries.
Only 8.77% of the libraries in the sample maintain a digital repository for research papers published by faculty. Private colleges were much more likely than public ones to maintain a repository. Surprisingly, none of the research libraries in the sample maintained a repository.
Only 7.35% of the libraries in the sample had special endowments to support library electronic resources.
The libraries in the sample spent a mean of $31,689 over the past three years to re-equip, upgrade or develop new library instructional centers; one library spent $500,000 and median spending was zero.
38.24% of the libraries in the sample offer a non-credit information literacy course to library patrons. Research universities were the most likely to offer such a class, a somewhat bizarre fact, given that their students are probably the least likely to need such a class. Only 13.24% of the libraries offered a
one- or two-credit information literacy class; community colleges and research universities were the most likely to offer such a class and public colleges were more likely than private colleges to offer one. The smallest and largest colleges in the sample were much more likely than others to offer a one- or two-credit information literacy class.For a full table of contents and further information view our website at www.PrimaryResearch.com.
Enjoy!
Recent Comments