A survey of 133 academic libraries reveals that most make online bibliographic retrieval services available to off-campus clients at prices higher than those charged to primary patrons. Extra charges are not inconsequential, being approximately $15/search or 38 percent of search costs. Eight references, questionnaire, and list of online vendors…

Focused on the development of definitions and guidelines for management statistics, this Systems and Procedures Exchange Center (SPEC) kit is based on the responses of 91 academic members of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) to a survey investigating their internal uses of statistics, external statistics reporting, and tools for…

Reports results of a pilot study and full survey of preservation/conservation concerns about the non-rare book collections at the Syracuse University libraries. The methodology is described, including physical characteristics of the collections that were examined and statistical analyses used. (CLB)

Users' expectations of libraries are changing as they find and obtain more information directly from the Web. To better understand how usage patterns are changing, the Digital Library Federation (DLF) and Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR)commissioned Outsell, Inc., to conduct a large-scale study of undergraduates, graduate…

This SPEC (Systems and Procedures Exchange Center) Kit presents the results of a survey of Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member libraries designed to document how ARL member libraries are collecting, using, and modifying their data on reference service transactions. A total of 74 of 124 ARL member libraries responded to the survey. A…

A survey of academic reference librarians in North Carolina provided data for an examination of differences in survey administration on paper and the World Wide Web. Research via the Internet is becoming more attractive for many researchers, but the effects of this medium upon research outcomes have been little explored. This study examined in…

This exploratory study focuses on the management of decline as characterized by shrinking resources and substantial reductions in operating budgets (retrenchment) in academic research libraries in Canada. The first of four major sections of the report addresses the management of retrenchment in Canadian research libraries, including the design of…

Western Kentucky University Libraries developed a survey similar to its Web-based library satisfaction survey, with identical content for library Web and exit patrons to compare these groups' responses. Focuses on the collection of Web and exit survey responses in a two-week period, transformation of response data for analysis, comparison of the…

Arguing that professional library literature often ignores the problem of evaluating the effectiveness of a library tour or the aids (e.g., audiotape, slides, video, computer programs, handbooks) which may supplement the tour, this article provides a proposed evaluation model for measuring a tour's success. The evaluation of library tours is…

This report is the result of a project which analyzed the current collection of statistics from academic, public, and school libraries by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and by state agencies and prepared recommendations for a more efficient and effective national data collection system. Current data collection methods are…

This report involved a survey of 199 postsecondary institutions in Canada to determine how many universities and colleges provide some type of library support for their off-campus and distance-education students; and to tabulate and compare the types of library support provided by those institutions. The report contains narrative, a series of 21…

Most libraries involved to any extent with total quality management (TQM) realize that successfully gathering information from their customers is the key to improving services. To do this libraries must employ a variety of methodologies, both quantitative and qualitative research. Quantitative primary data is usually collected in libraries by…

The Academic Libraries Survey (ALS) was established in 1966 to collect concise information on library resources, services, and expenditures for the entire population of academic libraries in the United States. The ALS is conducted every 2 years as a cooperative venture of the U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Commerce, Bureau of…

Discusses the ARL (Association of Research Libraries) E-Metrics project that is investigating problems related to collecting and using data for electronic materials and services. Describes a survey of libraries that focused on data collection activities and showed a lack of preparation as well as a lack of consistent statistics from database…

Glasgow Caledonian University Library (Scotland) conducted a pilot study to design a set of user chosen performance measures which can be used in British academic libraries for data collection. Members of 8 stakeholder groups were identified and given an 103-question survey, with each question to be rated on a 1-5 scale of importance. Stakeholder…