The study presents data from 24 corporate and other business libraries about their spending patterns, use of staff time, and plans and priorities. The 116 page study covers spending on print and digital resources, efforts to educate end users in databases use, staff trends and dimensions, uses of outsourcing, the library’s relationship with corporate archives, marketing of information services to library end users, the impact of video and social media, use of eBooks and much more. Data is broken out separately by institutional size and for corporate/regulatory and MBA libraries. The report also examines uses of library staff time, pinpointing time spent on teaching search techniques, developing metadata, choosing information resources and other tasks. The mean number of employees of the 24 organizations sponsoring the libraries was 18,326 with a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 100,000.
Some of the report’s many findings are that:
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The number of full time equivalent librarians employed by the organizations corporate or business libraries was a mean of 3.72 with a minimum of 0.5 and a maximum of 20.
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The mean amount that is paid for outsourced labor annually is $32,500 with a minimum of $25,000 and a maximum of $40,000. No non-USA library outsources.
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The percentage of work time devoted to teaching search techniques was a mean of 9.43% with a minimum of 0 and a maximum of 30%.
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The highest level of annual spending for online services by any library in the sample was $1.5 million.