In 2005–06, the reporting law libraries held a median of 322,284 volumes, spent a total of $206,514,082, and employed 2,238 FTE staff. Expenditures for materials and staff accounted for the bulk of total expenditures, at 47% and 45% respectively. Respondents reported spending a total of $14,893,320 for electronic materials; this includes a total of $13,167,729 for electronic serials.
In 2005–06, the reporting health sciences libraries held a median of 245,212 volumes, spent a total of $239,944,918, and employed 2,524 FTE staff. Expenditures for materials and staff accounted for the bulk of total expenditures, at 46% and 41% respectively. Respondents reported spending a total of $51,689,469 for electronic materials, or a median of 54% of their total materials budgets; this includes a total of $47,179,215 for electronic serials.
Faced with ever-increasing journal subscription costs and declining library collections budgets, libraries are expanding their collections by making open access (OA) research literature available through their catalogs, Web sites, open URL resolvers, and other resources. While not free to produce, as defined by the Budapest Open Access Initiative, OA research literature is made freely accessible to users by removing price and permission barriers.
A special double issue of the ARL Bimonthly Report, no. 252/253, focuses on the state of university publishing and the evolving role for research libraries in the delivery of publishing services.
The Ithaka report “University Publishing in a Digital Age,” is the focus of three articles in this special issue: a summary of the Ithaka report by its original authors, an assessment by NASULGC's David Shulenburger of the report’s recommendation that research institutions should have “publishing strategies,” and a description of the University of Michigan Library's hosting of social commentary on the Ithaka report using CommentPress.
A family of resources to help information workers be more effective, raise the value of information in their organisations and contribute to success. Read more »
Recently I have found myself cooing over visualisation maps (and heat maps) of health and well being resources. The content rich data is overlayed with mapping technologies, and some interesting themes and patterns are emerging.
A lot of the talk around social media in the last year has been around information overload. Social media has provided us with new and exciting ways to create content. But it has also meant learning new ways to manage and engage with social media tools. Are we teetering on the edge of an information overload precipice?
Information overload is a figment of your imagination. Or a failure of your filter. Or a symptom of your technological submissiveness. Depends on who you ask.
What if you had to sort through 3.5 million articles and social media posts a day and try to pull out the most relevant items for your organisation? What if you then had to cobble it all together into something readable for your top groups and executives in your organisation?
Alacra Compliance saves time by aggregating information from both free and fee-based sources and enabling users to conduct an accurate federated search across these sources (coined “simultaneous search” by Alacra).
FreePint Family
Quilting big data threads
The fallacy of information overload
Information overload: fact, fantasy or filter failure? 
