[Web4lib] Results from The Survey of Academic Libraries, 2008-09 Edition

[primarydat at aol.com]

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:

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.

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.

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 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.

The Survey of Academic Libraries, 2008-09 Edition is available directly 
 from Primary Research Group or from major book distributors such as 
Midwest Library Services, Baker & Taylor, Blackwell and others. For a 
full table of contents and further information view our website at 
www.PrimaryResearch.com.


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