This exhaustive study, based on data from 44 colleges and universities, presents a broad range of data and commentary about how academic libraries have altered their use of space in the past three years, and how they plan to alter it in the future. Among the many issues discussed are uses of space for patron seating, workstations, information commons, group and personal work rooms, classrooms, special collections, meetings and performances, special technology equipped rooms, energy saving technology, roof gardens and much more.
The study also looks at overall budget trends in the capital spending and at spending on and results of major redesigns. The 230+ page analysis also looks at general capital spending on information technology, new buildings and other forms of capital expenditures by academic libraries, in addition to exploring the sources and prospects for funding new library capital spending initiatives.
Data in the report is broken out by size and type of institution, for public and private institutions, and by level of tuition, among other variables.
Just a few of the report’s many findings are that: 27% of the surveyed libraries plan to decrease their book collection spaces by greater than 10% and another 39% of the firms by less than 10%.
Only 7% of all the libraries in our sample plan an increase in their book collection spaces to any degree and 25% plan no changes over the next three years
Of all the libraries the sample 61% reported no planned changes to their special collections spaces for the next three years. More than 27% of sampled libraries report planned expansions and the remaining 9.1% will shrink this space allocation.
The mean percentage of all library patrons that use their own computing device in the library was 57%. Community colleges lagged other types of colleges; only a mean of 19% of community college students used their laptops or other portable computing devices in the library to access library resources.