Snapshots: Library Spending

Some stuff you might find useful about academic and college library strategies and school / public libraries cooperation:

From OCLC:

Snapshot of Priorities & Perspectives in U.S. Academic Libraries

“Most community college library staff :

• Consider licensed e-collections and e-books to be their top priority and current initiative

• Believe their current library location structure will be the same in five years

• Rely mostly on listservs and email to stay current – a few use social media.

Community college library staff are less likely than other academic library and public library staff to expect that a national digital library will exist in the next five years.

Community college libraries are distinctively putting more focus on outreach and library instruction and their back-end offi ce technology compared to other academic libraries.”

From SLJ:

It Takes Two: SLJ’s first public library spending survey uncovers an opportunity for tighter collaboration between school and public librarians            

http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/slj/newsletters/newsletterbucketextrahelping2/894181-477/it_takes_two_sljs_first.html.csp

“The results of SLJ’s first survey of public library  spending habits on children’s and young adult services reveals a  disturbing trend: only 30 percent of respondents say their library  collaborates with local schools to coordinate book purchases to support the curriculum—leaving 70 percent that  don’t. It’s true that “coordinate book purchases” implies a tight  relationship, and collaboration goes both ways, but passive  collaboration appears to be the norm, at best, with only nine percent of  public libraries surveyed saying they work directly with school  librarians and teachers to purchase materials that help with homework  assignments. A third of public librarians (34 percent) consider  purchasing materials that support homework and the school curriculum,  and when it comes to urban libraries, that number rises to 46 percent  (see tables 1–3).

What would it mean, we wondered, if we could flip these  numbers? Wouldn’t it make our kids stronger, and perhaps make both  school and public libraries better?”

Stephen