Here are a Few of the Stats that are Included in the Review:
This is an update of a report that was first published last year, when the 2006–7 figures were analysed. It is heavily weighted towards academic libraries, and quite US-centric: 77.03% of the respondents were college or university librarians (as opposed to 22.97% public or special librarians); and78.38% of them worked in the US (as opposed to 21.62%‘non-US’ librarians).
One of the most interesting findings of the report is that librarians with the biggest budgets (of $4m or more) increased their expenditure on e-books much more in 2006–7 (when the average increase was 35%) than in 2007–8 (when the average increase was 14.2%). Even more markedly, librarians with budgets of between $1.5m and $4m increased their expenditure on e-books by an average of 53.3% between 2006 and 2007, but by an average of just 7.43% between 2007 and 2008.
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Of the sample featured in the report, half had a NetLibrary contract, 34% used Gale Reference Library, 27% used Ebrary, and17.6% used Safari. Institutions with budgets of over $4m were seven times more likely to subscribe to Safari than others(which is not surprising, given that Safari has a specialist appeal, and libraries with smaller budgets tend to buy only very generalist e-book collections).
The libraries in the sample were relatively loyal to their e-book platform providers. On average, 77% expected to renew current contracts (with83% of academic librarians expecting to do so, and 61% of special/public librarians). 70% of the total spending on e-books in the sample was with aggregators; 24.6% was with individual publishers (the remaining 5.4% is not accounted for).
Much More After the Click
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A surprising and disheartening statistic, given the effort that has been put into both producing and standardizing them, is that 80% of the respondents said that they did not use vendor-supplied usage statistics extensively.
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The libraries in the sample spent a mean figure of $3,760 on e-books in the last year a significant but not astronomical sum when compared to print expenditure. (As a comparison, median ARL library expenditure on print monographs in 2007 was a little over $2m.)
See Also: Primary Research has More Statistics From the Report In This Media Release:
+ Well over 81% of the sample cataloged their e-book collection and listed it in their online library catalog.
+ For the most part, librarians in the sample felt that their patrons were less skilled in using e-book collections than they were in using databases of magazine, newspaper and journal articles.
+ The libraries in the sample had MARC records for a mean of approximately 74% of the e-books in their collections.
+ Many libraries reported significant use of electronic directories. 12.5% reported extensive use and 30% said that use was significant. The larger libraries reported the heaviest use.
+ Use of e-books in the hard sciences was particularly high. More than 30% of participants said that use of e-books in the hard sciences defined as chemistry, physics and biology)was quite extensive and another 26% noted significant use.
+ Libraries in the sample maintained a print version for a mean of 24% of the e-books in their e-book collections.
+ Nearly 21% of the libraries in our sample have digitized out-of-copyright books in their collections in order to make their contents more available to their patrons.
+ E-books account for only about 3.9% of the books on course reserve, with a minimum of 0 to a maximum of 30%.
+ Nearly 70% of the sample’s total spending on e-books was with aggregators, while just over 24.6% of the total spending was spent with individual publishers.
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