Education Dept. Releases Biennial Report on Academic Libraries

In the 2010 fiscal year, academic libraries in the United States lent about 11.2 million documents to other libraries and spent about $1.2-billion on electronic subscriptions to current serials, according to the results of a survey released today by the National Center for Education Statistics, the statistical arm of the U.S. Department of Education. The survey report, “Academic Libraries: 2010 First Look,” presents statistics on library services, collections, library staff, expenditures, electronic services, and information literacy, covering some of the same ground as a similar report from the Association of Research Libraries. Conducted every two years, the Education Department survey gathers information from two- and four-year degree-granting postsecondary institutions in the United States. Among the other 2010 findings: Academic libraries employed almost 89,000 full-time staff members, about 30 percent of them librarians, and about half of libraries’ expenditures went to cover salaries. The report breaks down statistics according to the size and Carnegie classification of institutions but does not further analyze them.