This survey presents data and commentary from 39 law firm, law school, courthouse and other law libraries about how Amazon has impacted their purchasing. The report particularly focuses on print books but also includes a broad range of other items including but not limited to: office supplies, archival supplies, computing devices and other information technology, eBooks, online courses, videos, legal journals, magazines and many other items. The study looks at how Amazon has impacted law library purchasing and how it is likely to impact it in the near future. In addition to the quantitative data, the report furnishes advice from survey participants about how they use Amazon and plan to use it in the near future.
Just a few of the report’s many findings are that:
Purchases from Amazon accounted for 2.8% of total purchases of audiobooks in the past year by the libraries sampled.
Mean spending on eBooks from all publishers and aggregators by the libraries sampled was $6,371 with most volume accounted for by university law libraries.
Half of all libraries with an Amazon Prime account had purchased computer or printer supplies from Amazon in the past year.
Mean spending on print books dropped to an estimated $162,331 for the 2018-19 academic or fiscal year, a drop of approximately 2.1% but more than 4% in real terms (accounting for inflation).
Hein accounted for 22.17% of books acquired by the libraries in the sample through aggregators in the past year.