Primary Research Group has published the Survey of Academic Library Database
Licensing Practices, 2016-17 Edition, ISBN 978-157440-399-2
This international study presents data from 29 colleges and universities about
their database licensing practices, including spending data on eBooks,
databases, and eJournals. The report looks closely at trends in how staff
time is consumed on issues such as invoice-checking, contract examination,
training patrons in database use and other tasks. In addition we probe
librarian feelings on additions to or subtractions from their current database
portfolio and their level of interest in novel database such as those of
syllabi, open access course materials, textbooks, classroom video and blogs.
The report looks at the use of free information resources such as Google
Scholar, and tracks librarian assessment of the rate of price increases for
online information.
The study also probes opinions about the use of file sharing sites that make
copyright publications available at no charge without the permission of the
publishers.
The study also looks at disputes with vendors providing data on the use of
lawyers in contract disputes and the frequency of publisher audits and other
behavior designed to check contract violations.
Data is broken out by many variables such as college type, enrollment, tuition
level and other factors.
Some of the survey participants are: Johns Hopkins University Welch Medical
Library, the Australian National University, the University of Bath,
Vanderbilt University, Saskatchewan Polytechnic, University at Buffalo and
UCONN Health, among others.
Just a few of the report’s many findings are that:
• 8.52% of the time spent in database research by librarians sampled was
spent on Google Scholar.
• Public colleges in the sample spent a mean of $82,600 on eBook
licenses in the past year.
• Laptops accounted for a mean of 42% of database access for the
libraries sampled, fixed workstations for 40.33%.
• Research university libraries in the sample spent an average of more
than 2,000 staff hours per year reviewing and paying invoices from database
vendors.
For a table of contents, excerpt, the questionnaire and list of participants,
view the product page for this report at:
http://www.primaryresearch.com/view_product.php?report_id=604
Or visit our general website at www.PrimaryResearch.com. Primary Research
Group studies are also available from most major book distributors and many
research report aggregators.
Received on Tue Jun 28 2016 - 12:08:10 EDT