Science and engineering libraries have an important role to play in preserving the intellectual content in research areas of the departments they serve. This study employs bibliographic data from the Web of Science database to examine how much research material is required to cover 90% of faculty citations in civil engineering and computer…

This article describes how York University analyzed the results from its 2010-11 implementation of the Measuring the Impact of Networked Electronic Services for Libraries survey to measure value of investments in e-resources. The results were assessed through two variables: e-resources used by faculty when carrying out funded and non-funded…

ARL is the bimonthly report on research library issues and actions from ARL (Association of Research Libraries), CNI (Coalition of Networked Information), and SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition). ARL reports on current issues of interest to academic and research library administrators, staff, and users; higher education…

What will Google do next? Representatives of the company divulge few details of their projects -- a policy that, in the case of its partnerships with university libraries, probably only fuels the buzz. In this interview, Adam M. Smith, a senior business-product manager, discusses Google's work with publishers and libraries on expanding its…

A statistical analysis of responses to a LibQUAL+™ survey at the University of Colorado at Boulder (UCB) was conducted to investigate factors related to patrons' satisfaction with electronic collections. It was found that a respondent's discipline was not related to his or her satisfaction with the Libraries' electronic collection, nor was the…

Recent reports on Australia's research infrastructure have highlighted the decline in serial subscriptions in academic and research libraries during the 1990s. They have used the annual CAUL statistics in order to support these claims. This article examines the CAUL statistics for serial subscriptions, indicating their numerous flaws when used for…

This report presents statistics on how Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member libraries spend money on electronic resources. This report indicates that expenditures for electronic resources account for 19.6%, on average, of ARL institutions' library materials budgets. ARL libraries reported spending more than $171 million on electronic…

This document is the latest in a series of annual publications that describe collections, staffing, expenditures, and service activities for the 123 members of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). Of these, 113 are university libraries, the remaining 10 are public, governmental, and nonprofit research libraries. Data reported by member…

Accelerating global flows of people and information have formed new communities and networks across social and political borders. Higher education is one such globalised knowledge community in which new patterns of knowledge, accreditation, research alliances, and social and professional relationships are emerging. In this paper I outline the…

"ARL Statistics 2004-05" is the latest in a series of annual publications that describe collections, staffing, expenditures, and service activities for the 123 members of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). Of these, 113 are university libraries and 10 are public, governmental, and nonprofit research libraries. Data reported by…

Declining reference statistics, diminishing human resources, and the desire to be more proactive and embedded in academic departments, prompted the University of South Florida Library to create a taskforce for re-envisioning reference services. The taskforce was charged with examining the staffing patterns at the desk and developing…

Purposeful assessment of space for the understanding and improvement of the academic library is a relatively new area of inquiry. This essay offers a framework to consider different factors affecting such an assessment and insights for undertaking a meaningful inquiry about the relationship of space to an academic library's evolving purpose as…

This article discusses a project undertaken to assess the journals in a Big Deal package by applying a weighted value algorithm measuring quality, utility, and value of individual titles. Carried out by a national library consortium in Canada, the project confirmed the value of the Big Deal package while providing a quantitative approach for…

The authors implemented a survey of faculty attitudes toward library research instruction that is closely related to two previously published surveys. After reviewing their results, the authors raise questions about the significance of some of the results of all three surveys.

Academic libraries have traditionally collected reference statistics using hash marks on paper. Although efficient and simple, this method is not an effective way to capture the complexity of reference transactions. Several electronic tools are now available to assist libraries with collecting often elusive reference data--among them homegrown…