Published by Publishers Communication Group, (PCG) the report highlights regional differences and smaller increases in journals budgets. Europe, however, is the only region to predict a decrease in library budgets. The researchers surveyed academic institutions, government, corporate and medical/health libraries.
The overall library budget figure includes all the costs of maintaining a library – salary, materials and operating expenditures.
Key findings
- Europe is the only region predicting an overall decrease in library budgets. The predicted figure however is marginal (0.1%)
- This figure is made up of a predicted 0.3% increase in serials budget; a -0.4% decrease in book budgets with no change in the budget for ‘materials’ (all content provision)
- Libraries in the Middle East and Africa are predicting the largest budget increases – 4.2% overall including an increase of 6.6% on serials budgets
- Asian Pacific is predicting an overall budget increase of 2.8%
- North America predicts a1% increase overall
- South American institutional libraries are predicting 2.1%
Serials
- 98% of institutes surveyed currently use e-journal service providers
- 22% of subscriptions are paper only
- Top academic institutions are most likely to take e-only subscriptions
- 41% of institutions are planning to cancel some subscriptions
- 31% are planning to increase their serial subscriptions
- Institutions are balancing the books by looking to cancel more expensive and/or less popular titles
- One Turkish corporate institution is planning to add 5000 serials titles to its collection
- One European medical institute is planning to cancel 5000!
Institutional repositories
- 54% of all institutions own, or share ownership of, a repository
- 71% of academic institutions provide a repository, rising to 85% of top academic institutions
Other interesting findings
- 58% of respondents provide reference management tools (68% of academic institutions
- This year a new question asked respondents about providing search and discovery services – take-up of such services is lowest in Europe
- Government libraries are most likely to report smallest budget increases
- Only Europe predicts a decrease in book budgets
The full study can be downloaded here.