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The Survey of Academic Libraries, 2008-09 Edition
Primary Research Group, July 2008
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 22.5% of the colleges sampled believed that librarians' salaries had been going up faster than the rate of inflation, while more than 34% believed that their salaries in the past year had gone down in real terms. Librarians in private colleges were more likely than their counterparts in public colleges to believe that their salaries had gone down in real terms in the past year.
- 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.
- The libraries in the sample accrued a mean of about $119,000 from library endowments in the past year, though the mean accrual was zero. Receipts by private colleges vastly overshadowed those by public colleges, by a factor of nearly 30:1. More than a quarter (26.47%) of the libraries in the sample had endowments specifically to support the purchase of books for the library. More than half of the libraries in colleges with more than 4,401 FTE students had endowments specifically to support book purchases for the library.
- For more than 47% of the libraries in the sample, the library capital budget has remained about the same over the past three years; it has increased somewhat for 23.54% and increased significantly for 7.35%. More than 38% of private college libraries have seen the capital budget increase either somewhat or significantly, while this is true for only about 23% of public college libraries.
- The general level of investment in chemistry-related info resources appears to have modestly increased. For about half of those sampled, investment in chemistry info has remained stable; for roughly a quarter it increased, but decreased for only 13.64% of participants. Investment in psychology-related information has increased for more than half of the libraries in the sample and has not decreased for any. Moreover, all types of libraries, public and private, community colleges and research universities, increased investment in psychology-related information resources in the past three years. Simi larly, investment in sociology and political science-related resources has also increased significantly in the past three years. Although more than 55% held investment in these subjects stable, more than 34% increased it and only about 4.5% decreased it. Public colleges in particular increased investment in these subjects, as did colleges offering the most advanced degrees.
- We asked survey participants to list their top five academic MLS programs in North America, on the basis of scholarly output and effectiveness in preparing professional librarians for practice. Library science programs received 5 points for a first place selection, four for second place, three for third and so on. The leader by far was the University of Illinois at Campaign Urbana, with 77 total points; two universities tied for the second spot, each with 38 total poi nts, the University of Michigan, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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