So I ponied up the money for a PDF of Primary Research Group’s 2007 edition of its Corporate Library Benchmarks study ($189 for print or PDF, $289 for a site license). I really encourage people to check out the study - this page lists the tables included, and you can find a summary of findings here. These are my initial thoughts:
- I really wish there were a methodology section.
- 45 libraries, most of them in the U.S., seems a small sample if they’re aiming for representativeness. Especially when they go on to make cuts by industry. Also, should MBA libraries really count as corporate?
- “Organizations that have decreased the overall amount of space devoted to libraries in the past two years still average a higher number of library locations than those organizations that are not trying to decrease space.” This intrigues me - if companies are trying to reduce space, why not close down locations? I wonder if this relates to embedding librarians in business units rather than having them grouped together?
- With respect to outsourcing, it would have been interesting to see current and historical data on offshoring generally, not just limited to China, India, Russia and developing countries. I freely admit to bias here
- “Overall, more libraries lost FTE positions over the past two years than gained FTE positions.
More than 30% of the libraries in the sample lost full time equivalent positions over the past
three years, while 11.63% gained positions; more than 58% experienced no change in the
number of FTE positions allocated to the library.” While the phrasing of the first sentence is accurate, another way of looking at it is “Overall, most libraries experienced no change in the number of FTE positions allocated to the library. More than 30% of the libraries lost….” - It looks like finance and higher education have a lot of ready reference questions.
- Finance and pharmaceutical/medical companies are most likely to have their librarians participate in knowledge management programs.
- Corporate librarians really aren’t taking advantage of blogs and RSS. More likely to publish blogs after space has been cut, don’t spend much time reading them (which is admittedly understandable) and most don’t take advantage of the possibilities of RSS to disseminate information to executives.
- Wow, other corporate librarians travel a lot more than I did.
Other people’s comments and reactions to the study?
Posted by Steven Kaye
