The amount of office space that corporations allocate to their libraries has fallen by 8.36% over the past five years, according to a new survey of corporate libraries "Corporate Library Benchmarks, 2004-05 Edition" ISBN: 1-57440-069-X.

Reports on results of a major survey of corporate and other business libraries. Gives extensive data on management policies and practices and details on spending trends for salaries, electronic and print materials, and library services.

(PRWEB) September 3, 2004 -- The amount of office space that corporations allocate to their libraries has fallen by 8.36% over the past five years, according to a new survey of corporate libraries "Corporate Library Benchmarks, 2004-05 Edition" ISBN: 1-57440-069-X, published by Primary Research Group Inc. The data in the report is based on a survey of 50 major US organizations, largely major corporations, as well as several business oriented government and trade association libraries. This is Primary Research Group's fourth major study of corporate libraries. Other findings include:

Only 8.7% of the libraries in the sample experienced an increase in the amount of office space allocated to them over the past five years, while nearly 4x that number, or 32.61%, experienced a decrease in the space allocated to them.

Furthermore, about 3% of the organizations contacted for this study had eliminated their libraries in the two year period between the 2003 and 2005 editions of Corporate Library Benchmarks. The lack of inclusion of these libraries in the sample base artificially minimizes the sample findings that corporate libraries are occupying less physical space, since the inclusion of these libraries would amplify this finding.

Expected Budget Increases for 2005

The mean expected budget increases in 2005 for the libraries in the sample was only 1.04%, far below the expected rate of economic growth. Corporate administrations have become accustomed to library downsizing in the lean years of the early 2000’s, and do not appear to be supportive of new rounds of investment in library resources.

Library Staff Time

Increasingly, librarians are spending less time on routine library work and more time as researchers monitoring subjects for management. The librarians in the sample spent 34.18% of their time doing research for senior management but only 4.77% of their time giving classes, seminars or formal tutorials in how to use library resources. Librarians in consulting/business services and finance spent more time on direct research for executives than librarians in other sectors.

Attitude of Library Management Towards Knowledge Management

For about half of the libraries in the sample, knowledge management software and practices had little impact on their day to day work life, while for a third, the impact was quite important.

Patent Research

A shade less than half of the libraries in the sample believed that patent research was best done in house, while a shade more than half believed that it was best to outsource some or all of such research.

Trade Off in Spending Between Print and Electronic Materials

Forty four percent (44%) of the librarians in the sample noted that they planned to reduce spending on print information and increase spending on electronic information, while 46% said that they planned to maintain spending on print information and increase spending on electronic information. Only 8% said that they planned to increase spending on both formats.

Budget Trends

About 68.3% of the libraries in the sample had no change in their overall budget in 2004, while about 17.1% experienced an increase, and 14.63% had a decrease in their budget. More than 27% expect an increase in their budgets in 2005 while only 15.91% expect a decrease, with the remainder expecting no increase or decrease in their budgets.

Demand for Books

More than three quarters of the libraries in the sample note that demand for print books has not changed over the past two years, while close to 16% believe that it has increased and only 6.82% say that it has decreased. These results are consistent with findings in past editions of Corporate Library Benchmarks.

Nonetheless, spending by libraries in the sample on print books fell substantially from 2003 to 2004, though enormous cuts by a few large libraries accounted for virtually the entire decline in spending of more than 25%. Most libraries in the sample maintained print book spending or decreased it slightly.

For more information, see the table of contents in the attachment, or contact James Moses or Phil Wong at Primary Research Group Inc., 212-736-2316.

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