All types of libraries are included in the results. The largest group of completed surveys (47%) came from college and university libraries, followed by ARL (18%); and Academic Medical (17%); Special Libraries (8%); Public libraries accounted for (6%) and finally government libraries (4%).
Libraries of all sizes were represented in the survey; 25 percent of respondents were at libraries with 25,000+ users and 35 percent at libraries with 5,000 or fewer users.
Here Are The Questions Asked with Sampling of Results: Full Report Here
Percentage of librarians indicating the following staff actions
The number one answer was 63% was not replace staff. Hiring freezes; job elimination; staff reassignments; and the reduction of staff hours also made the Top 5.
Comment: Between not replacing staff, hiring freezes, and job elimination this is a very difficult time to find a job or perhaps move to up the career ladder by moving to a new position.
Strategies to Reduce Budgets:
The top answer at 86% was to move from print and electronic subscription to e-only. Over 61% said that they would seek alternative open access content. Other answers include: consolidate vendors; break up e-packages and renew the most used titles; try to renegotiate prices; cancel databases with the most duplicate content and keep those with the most unique full text***; and consolidate software/access and management services such as link resolvers, discovery, etc.
Percentage of Librarians Indicating a Metric as Very Important When Making Content Acquisition/ De-Selection Decisions
The number one answer almost 30% points above the number two answer was usage stats/cost per use.
The number two answer was faculty recommendation.
***Comments
1) It would have been useful to know precisely who was surveyed. Current clients?; Former clients? A Combination?; Those Who Don't Use any EBSCO Products or Services? Or, was it a completely random sample of libraries taken from entries in one or more library directories?
2) Perhaps the result as it was written, cancel databases with the most duplicate content... which was the number two answer at 75% could have been written in a different way. We would have tried to do that if we were at EBSCO. Why? Perception, right or wrong. From the way the answer is worded and the time the survey was taken might lead one to believe that the survey is no more than a promo piece for EBSCO. Why? Given the many "DISCUSSIONS" that took place at the end of January, 2010 re: unique content by way of exclusive contracts with publishers. If the survey was conducted today it would likely be less of a perception issue. However, this survey took place in February. That's just a few days or a few weeks after the heated talk.
Overall, not the happiest (understatement of the day) set of survey results.
Almost daily many of us come across stories (mostly public libraries both large and small) having financial problems.
Note: Re: NYC Public Library Cut
Even if (and we hope they do) Mayor Bloomberg And Mr. LeClerc can put together a solution that makes everyone happy and cut 50% of what's called for today or $18 million, it's still a huge cut for any library.
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? 
