The study presents data and commentary from 12 corporate, 4 law firm, 5 MBA-program and 6 additional business libraries about a broad range of their operations and plans. The study presents detailed data on staffing and hiring plans, and recent, current and for some info categories planned spending on books, eBooks, online databases, journals, newspapers and other periodicals, and other information vehicles. The report also explores the extent of use of outsourced labor, use of video libraries in business librarianship, and the perceived success or failure of information literacy efforts. The report presents detailed data on the perception of the value of a range of popular business databases, as well as precise details on how business librarians spend their work time, with separate data points for doing research for patrons, evaluating new information resources, teaching information literacy and other librarian priorities.
Just a few of the report’s many findings are that:
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34.62% of the libraries sampled said that they had lost 1-3 FTE employee positions over the past two years
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U.S. organizations were much more likely than those from other countries to say they used an outsourcing supplier
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Small corporate libraries were much more likely than others to say that their end users were highly skilled in the use of eBook collections
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On average, organizations in the sample spent $843,689.47 on content/materials in 2017
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57.69% of libraries sampled said that they had added a new online database subscription in the past year and 34.62% said that they had increased their total stock of database subscriptions.