The study presents detailed data on the interlibrary loan operations of approximately 50 colleges and universities with data broken out for different types of higher education institutions and by other variables, such as for public and private institutions, and by college enrollment level. The report gives detailed data on turnaround times for various kinds of interlibrary loan borrowing and lending requests, use of technology and services, impact of distance learning and MOOCs on interlibrary loan, copyright and open access issues, the administrative jurisdiction of the interlibrary loan department, departmental cost structure, personnel benchmarks, trends in departmental budgets and other issues in interlibrary loan management.
This 254 page report presents data from a survey of the cataloging practices of approximately 80 North American academic libraries. In more than 630 tables of data and related commentary from participating librarians and our analysts, the report gives a broad overview of academic library cataloging practices related to outsourcing, selection and deployment of personnel, salaries, the state of continuing education in cataloging, and much more. Survey participants also discuss how they define the catalogers¿ range of responsibilities, how they train their catalogers, how they assess cataloging quality, whether they use cataloging quotas or other measures to spur productivity, what software and other cataloging technology they use and why, and how they make outsourcing decisions and more. Data is broken out by size and type of college and for public and private colleges. Just a few of the reports many findings are presented below: ¿More than 70% of the libraries in the sample say that their catalogers have salary levels that are comparable to those of public service librarians at their institutions. ¿About 27.3% of the survey participants routinely use paraprofessional staff for original cataloging. Public colleges were more than three times more likely than private colleges to use paraprofessionals for original cataloging, and larger colleges were more than twice as likely as smaller ones to do so. ¿41.56% of the libraries in the sample outsource authority control, obtaining new and updated authority records. ¿About 15.6% of the libraries in the sample outsource the cataloging of e-journals; close to 28% of research universities do so. ¿20.78% of libraries in the sample use MarcEdit or other MARC editor to preview records and globally edit to local standards prior to loading. ¿29.7% of the libraries in the sample have technical services areas that track turnaround time from Acquisitions receipt to Cataloging to shelf-ready distribution. ¿About 24.7% of the libraries in the sample use paraprofessional support staff for master bibliographic record enrichment in OCLC. Most of those doing so were public colleges and offered beyond the B.A. degree. ¿Authority control experience was considered a very important criterion for hiring by only 8.11% of survey participants, while a bit more than 35% considered it important. 21.62% considered authority control experience not so important as a hiring criterion.
Consortia and other library partnerships are now sharing ever larger fractions of their collections, and this book gives library staff the tools necessary for a smoothly functioning ILL system.
The study profiles the interlibrary loan efforts of nine leading American colleges: the University of Texas at Arlington, Tulane University, the University of Minnesota, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Brigham Young University, the University of Tennessee, Colorado State University, Oberlin College and Stony Brook University. The libraries interviewed shared their thoughts on a broad range of topics including but not restricted to: workflow management, productivity measures, departmental organization, budgets and spending trends, service to distance learning students, copyright and licensing issues, measures for special collections, automation and software use, use of institutional repositories and open access publications, shipping costs and procedures, and many other facets of academic interlibrary loan management. The purpose of the report is to define and diffuse best practices by profiling measures taken by nine leading institutions of higher education. Although the report contains much useful quantitative information, especially relating to budgets and employment, the focus in this report is on a journalistic narrative explaining departmental goals, procedures and practices and evaluating results.
The report presents detailed data from 65 academic libraries about their completed, current, or planned library renovation projects. The study includes detailed data on capital spending, library redesign budgets, and spending on computer labs & infocommons, in-library classrooms, artwork, library furniture, carpeting and other flooring, and other elements of academic library renovations or new construction. Details construction preferences for architectural features such as atriums, landscaping, better access to restrooms and building entrances/exits, installation or expansion of library cafes, development of group work areas, better use of natural light, better soundproofing and other design features often sought in new academic library construction or renovation. Also explores the use of various renovation and building features designed to save energy. Other areas covered include student satisfaction with the library redesign, its impact on the use of library services, and governance issues over what campus groups guide and control the redesign. Data is broken out by size and type of library, and by libraries that have experienced recent renovation projects vs those that have not.
Assessment is essential to describe a library’s value and to inform decision-making. Using the four key assessment components of design, data collection, data analysis, and dissemination, Assessing Academic Library Performance: A Handbook provides strategies and case studies for performing four different types of assessments: Service assessments for the library’s outward and inward facing services that either help library users or other library employees to help users. These assessments focus on providing and improving how things are done to better serve others. Resources assessments for the physical and virtual resources that the library has in its holdings or to which it provides access. Resources are the reason libraries exist as they help patrons in instructional and research pursuits. Space assessments for physical and online library spaces. These assessments help ensure that spaces meet user needs. Personnel relationship assessments look at how library employees interact with each other. as library professionals. While not for evaluation or advancement purposes, these types of assessments provide information on what library employees can do to improve their relationships with one another. Each section has information on conducting each aspect of libraries followed by three examples to illustrate how assessment is used to support descriptions of library value and to help library employees make decisions that are critical to library improvement.
In this new edition of the definitive Interlibrary Loan Practices Handbook, edited by CheriT Weible and Karen Janke, expert contributors clearly explain the complexities of getting materials for patrons from outside the library. This collection presents a complete view of the interlibrary loan (ILL) process, with contributions from all areas of the technical services community, providing Guidance on how to do ILL efficiently and effectively, with advice on being a considerate borrower and lender Details of preferred staffing and management techniques, showing how best practices can be implemented at any institution Discussion of important issues that can fall between the cracks, such as hidden copyright issues, and the logistics of lending internationally As consortia and other library partnerships share ever larger fractions of their collections, this book gives library staff the tools necessary for a smoothly functioning ILL system.
Explore the ARL’s initiatives for identifying, formulating, and testing new criteria for evaluating academic libraries in the digital age! The proliferation of electronic information resources in the past decade has changed the ways in which research libraries evaluate their service and holdings. This collection of articles (thirteen of which previously appeared in ARL’s bimonthly newsletter/report on research issues and actions) examines new measures for library evaluation that are being developed by the Association of Research Libraries. It presents an overview of how the Association of Research Libraries’ “new measures” initiative developed, plus insightful reports on the details of the SERVQUAL, LibQUAL+, and E-metrics projects. Handy flow charts and tables make the information easily accessible and understandable. From the editor: “The profound changes in library management and collection development brought about by digital technology in the closing decade of the twentieth century have changed the way we think about libraries. If we were to ask librarians who have been in the profession for more than a decade how they evaluated a library, we probably would hear statistics about the number of volumes held and added annually, the number of serial subscriptions, how much money a library has to spend, and how many professionals are on staff. These are the traditional criteria by which libraries have been judged throughout much of the twentieth century. Newer librarians, however, especially those who entered the profession in the late 1980s and 1990s, use a different yardstick and frequently recite different statistics that include terms such as user satisfaction, spending on electronic resources and services, document delivery services, numbers of databases and electronic journals available, and services provided to distance learners.” In Evaluating the Twenty-First Century Library, you’ll find valuable information on: current performance measures for academic libraries the continuing search for accurate new performance measures the uses of learning outcomes assessment SERVQUAL, LibQUAL+, and the ARL LibQUAL+ Pilot Project the results of the 2000 Symposium on Measuring Library Service Quality the uses of E-metrics in assessing the academic networked environment and accurately measuring use, users, services, resources, and other factors an insightful discussion of the rise in spending on electronic information by research libraries
