ACRL’s 2015 Academic Library Trends and Statistics Report is now available. The full text report is for sale ($599). Info about ordering is available here.
Selected Findings From the Report:
Expenditures
The 2015 data show that library expenditures for collection materials averaged $5,700,113 for doctoral degree-granting institutions; $725,826 for comprehensive degree-granting institutions; $524,184 for baccalaureate schools and $146,542 for associate-degree granting institutions.
On average, doctoral degree granting institutions spent 76.7% of their materials budgets on ongoing commitments to subscriptions in 2015; comprehensive schools spent an average of 76.8%; baccalaureate schools spent an average 72.4% and associate degree granting institutions spent an average of 55.5%. On average, academic libraries spent 70.4% of their materials budget on subscriptions.
The 2015 data show that expenditures for salaries and wages accounted for 63.4% of the total library expenditures on average. Salaries and wages constituted 77.9% of total library expenditures for associate-degree granting institutions, 45.4% for baccalaureates, 87% for comprehensive schools, and 43.3% for doctoral/research institutions.
Collections
Of the libraries surveyed, 57.5% of doctoral degree-granting institutions, 34.5% of comprehensive degree-granting institutions, 38.5% of baccalaureate schools, and 19.9% of associate-degree granting institutions are developing or considering developing a shared print collection with a group of libraries or consortium partners to avoid duplication of titles between partner libraries.
More libraries are participating in open education initiatives by providing open access text books, teaching resources, courseware, and books, including 24% of associate degree granting institutions, 21.2% of baccalaureate schools, 22.4% of comprehensive schools, and 40.5% of doctoral/research libraries.
In the past five years, collection budgets have shifted from traditional collection development to patron-driven (PDA) or demand-driven acquisitions (DDA) with the largest shifts taking place in research/doctoral universities.
Currently only 27.5% of research/doctoral institutions, 48.6% of comprehensive schools, 55.2% of baccalaureate schools, and 67.7% of associate degree granting schools still use a traditional collection development model.
The 2015 survey includes data from 1,499 academic libraries in five major categories:
- Collections (including titles held, volumes, and electronic books)
- Expenditures (library materials, salaries and wages, etc.)
- Library Services
- Staffing
- Collection development trends (including shifts in formats, open education initiatives, institutional repositories, support for digitization, shared print collections, and more)
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