[Web4lib] Research Library International Benchmarks Published -- some results summarized

[primarydat at aol.com]

Primary Research Group has published Research Library International 
Benchmarks (isbn 1-57440-101-3). The 200-page study is based on data 
 from 45 major research libraries from the USA, Canada, Australia, 
Germany, the UK, Italy, Japan, Spain, Argentina, and other countries. 
The report presents a broad range of data on current and planned 
materials, salary, info technology and capital spending, spending 
trends for e-books, journals, books and much more. Provides data on 
trends in information technology training, electronic content 
purchasing, development of the library website, personnel deployment, 
information literacy efforts, workstation, laptop and learning space 
development, use of scanners and digital cameras, use of RFID 
technology, federated search and many other pressing issues for major 
research libraries, university and otherwise.

A few of the report’s findings, presented in more than 500 tables, are: 
Nearly 37% of the libraries in the sample increased spending somewhat 
on maintenance of IT equipment stock, while only 12.24% reduced such 
spending. A shade more than half held such spending constant over the 
past three years.

About 34% of the libraries in the sample have increased their level of 
employment for their Website staffs, while only about 5.5% have 
decreased such employment levels. No U.S. library in the sample 
decreased the number of employees working on the college Website in the 
past three years.

Mean spending on materials/content by the libraries in the sample was 
approximately $4.25 million, with a median of $1.91 million. Mean 
spending for the university libraries in the sample was $5.47 million. 
The nominal increase in materials spending this year for the libraries 
in the sample was 4.46%.

Spending on e-books by the libraries in the sample was a mean of 
$150,086 in 2007 with a range of “0” to $2 million. More than 60% of 
the libraries in the sample plan to increase spending on e-books over 
the next two years, while less than 7% plan to decrease e-book spending.

Only 13.46% of the libraries in the sample had received grant support 
 from a federal government in the past year. Data were similar for U.S. 
and non-U.S. libraries.

53% of libraries in the sample said that they would be not be 
digitizing much of their general collection of out-of-copyright books, 
and nearly 35% said that they had no plans to extensively digitize any 
of their collections.

Far more libraries in the sample plan to  increase than decrease 
spending on PCs and workstations, suggesting the hope that increases in 
spending on laptops by libraries, and by their patrons, might lead to 
lower investment levels in traditional workstation technology.

More than a third of the libraries in the sample plan to increase 
spending on IT training for staff while only a shade more than 12% plan 
to reduce such spending.  Non-U.S. libraries and university libraries 
were particularly interested in increasing spending on IT training. 
Corporate and legal libraries largely planned to hold spending constant 
or to spend less. Nearly 42% of the libraries with materials budgets 
over $5 million planned to spend more on IT training for staff.


44% of large research libraries plan to increase spending on outside or 
outsourced Web design, evaluation and consulting, but most smaller 
research libraries plan to hold such spending constant.

More than half of the libraries in the sample spend less than 10% of 
their staff time on information literacy issues. 19.5% spend from 10% 
to 20% of their staff time on these issues, and 12.2% respectively 
spend from 20% to 30% and 35% to 50% of
their staff time on these issues. Only 2.33% spend more than half of 
their staff time on information literacy issues.

A mean of 21% of the articles obtained by the libraries in the sample 
 from other institutions come from the digital repositories of these 
institutions rather than from traditional inter-library loan channels.

For a table of contents, list of participants and further information, 
view our website at www.PrimaryResearch.com.



James Moses
Primary Research Group, Inc.
Tel. 212-736-2316
Fax 212-412-9097