Primary Research Group has published The Survey of Medical and Other Scientific Libraries ISBN 157440-203-X, a major international benchmarking study of scientific libraries from academia, government, private industry and scientific\/medical associations.<\/p>\n
The report gives detailed data on trends in staffing, budgets, salaries, information literacy efforts, use of vendor supplied info literacy materials, info literacy training requirements, patron training in scholarly collaboration networks, materials spending overall and for books, databases, ebooks, journals and other information vehicles,\u00a0 developments in open access and digital repositories, use of eBook readers and tablet computers, patent information procurement efforts, special collections budgets, special collections digitization, video streaming, use of cloud computing services, use of RFID, barcoding and other inventory tracking technology, binding technology and services, developments in library computer centers and many other factors affecting the operation of medical and other scientific libraries.<\/p>\n
Just a few of the report\u2019s many findings are that:<\/p>\n
\u2022 Just 4.35 percent of the libraries in the sample include training in scholarly collaboration networks such as Vivo or Collexis in its patron education efforts and most of these libraries are in emerging economies.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Most libraries sampled spent nothing on content for eBook readers but those that did spent a mean of nearly $18,000 in the past year.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Overall spending on eBook subscriptions rose nearly 20% in 2012-13.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Traditional print book spending exceeded eBook spending but by a narrowing margin.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Librarians in institutions with library budgets exceeding $1 million spent more than 8% of their staff time promoting the institutional digital repository.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Mean spending by the libraries in the sample for information accessed online in the past year was $683,551.<\/p>\n
\u2022 8.7% of libraries sampled employ a PHD in the subject area on which the library focuses (apart from library science PHD\u2019s or other degrees related to library or information science).<\/p>\n
\u2022 More than 62% of government and international organization scientific libraries in the sample considered their information literacy efforts to be minimal at best.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Only six libraries reported aggregated spending on patent information including use of patent databases, search services and outsourced research and these libraries reported mean spending of $177,750.00.<\/p>\n
Data for this 200+ page report is broken out separately for four subject areas: medical libraries, engineering\/mathematics\/physics libraries, chemicals and energy, and all other scientific libraries.\u00a0 Data is also broken out for various measures of library size, as well as for three country\/region areas: 1) USA, 2) Other Developed Economies and 3) Emerging Economies, and also by type of library, ie, higher education, government, private industry, scientific society, etc.<\/p>\n