This study presents data about use of Google by visual arts librarians from 32 art libraries in colleges and universities, art schools, museums and public libraries and the non-educational private sector. The report gives detailed data and commentary on how visual arts librarians are using Google and its many apps including but not limited to Gmail, Google Maps, Google Images, Google Photos, Drive, YouTube, Google Advanced Search, Google Calendar, Google Scholar, Google Books and much more. The report relates precise information about exactly how much time librarians spend using each of these features each month, and how valuable they find them.
Data in the report is broken out by many useful variables such as institutional type, librarian work title, and the age of the survey participant, among other criteria. Just a few of the report’s many findings are that:
The interviewees spent, on average, 1.6 hours using Google Advanced Search in connection with their work during the past month.
Survey participants with a reference or information literacy background almost exclusively use the Google Search Engine, while respondents with a research or subject specialist background use Google Search Engine only in 62% cases and for administrators it accounts for 72% of total search engine use.
About 63% of the respondents use Google Drive often or very often
Among male respondents 15% of time spent on arts-related research was done through Google Scholar, Google Images, Google Photos or Google Books.