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Academic Library Website Benchmarks
Primary Research Group, Jan 2007, Pages: 125
Academic Library Website Benchmarks is based on data from more than 80 academic libraries in the USA and Canada. The 125+ page study presents detailed data on the composition of the academic library web staff, relations with the college and library information technology departments, use of consultants and freelancers, budgets, future plans, website marketing methods, website revision plans, usage statistics, use of software, development of federated search and online forms and much more. Data is broken out by enrollment size, public and private status, Carnegie Class, as well as for libraries with or without their own web staff.
Some of the report's findings are that:
- More than three quarters of all respondents plan a major redesign of the library website within the next two years. Nearly 85% of research universities (84.6%) planned a website redesign in this period. A high percentage of colleges with FTE enrollments below 2,000 (82%) planned to redesign their website within the next two years, compared to 72.7 to 78.3% of colleges with higher enrollments.
- The library information technology or web staff accounted for over 76% of the total man-hours spent running the college library websites for the colleges in the sample. College-wide IT or web staff performed an average of just 15.76% of the labor necessary to run the college library websites in the sample.
- Nearly 42% of survey participants used a content editing system provided by the central college web staff.
- Of the libraries that do use a content management system, just over a quarter expressed satisfaction for the most part and had no plans for changing software or management methods in the future. Another 31.4% reported that they were not completely satisfied and might change content management systems or their policies.
- The mean number of library staff or personnel who entered content into the college library website in the last full semester was 13.24. Community colleges had just 2.5 library employees entering content, compared to 5.2 employees at 4-year/MA granting institutions and 11.1 at PhD-level granting institutions. Research universities reported the highest number of library staff entering data, at 51.8, and a maximum of 200.
- Nearly half of survey participants selected JavaScript as their most commonly used scripting language on the college website.
- For a shade less than two thirds of the libraries (64.9%) the library website budget was part of the library IT budget, and not separately broken out; 35.1% considered it part of the college IT budget.
- More than 8 out of 10 college libraries use cascading style sheets at least to some degree.
- Approximately one in ten college libraries have a presence on the social networking site MySpace.
- The mean number of interactive tutorials on how to use the library or its services made available on the library website was 3.84, with a maximum of 50. Community colleges reported the fewest available interactive tutorials with a sample mean of just 0.82, while other institution types reported an average of between four and five. The mean number of end users who have visited or used these interactive tutorials in the past year was 3,757 with a maximum of 33,657.
- Over three quarters of the libraries in the sample (76.8%) do not have a 'My Library' type of service for users to log in to, save research or favorite places, and bookmark other commonly used library resources.
- The mean number of files on the library website was just over 5,400.
- Just over a third of the sample responded that they were currently offering federated search capabilities from the website, so that a broad range of library databases could be searched at once. Three out of four research universities had federated search capabilities, compared to just 53.33% of PhD-level granting institutions, 29.27% of 4-year/MA granting institutions, and just 8.33% of community colleges. The mean number of subject-specific search windows offered through federated searches was 19.72.
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