This report is based on a survey of thirty five academic library subject specialists in economics and finance, predominantly from research universities, including Northwestern, Georgetown, Princeton and many others. The study gives detailed data on budgets and spending patterns of subject specialists in economics and finance, including information on usage of eBooks, traditional books, databases and scholarly journals. The study also reports on collection development plans in a broad range of subject areas including energy economics, agricultural economics, macroeconomics, microeconomics, accounting, portfolio management, international financial regulation, econometrics, mathematical methods, economic area studies in Asia, Europe and North and South America (each region reported on separately), and many other subject areas.
The study reports on how finance and economics subject specialists use their time, breaking down their activities among categories such as information literacy, acquisitions and collection development and other areas. The report measures the extent to which university presses account for materials purchases in the field, and gives detailed info on the impact of blogs in economics and finance. Other topics covered include data on spending accounted for by contributions from economics and finance departments to economics and finance library purchases, and spending accounted for by grants or endowments specified for materials purchases in economics and finance.