International Survey of Research University Faculty: Evaluation of the Academic Library

The study present findings of a faculty evaluation of academic libraries from a survey of 500+ faculty in 55 research universities in the USA, Canada, the UK, Ireland and Australia. Faculty evaluate their academic libraries on a range of services and provide their input on whether their libraries should increase, decrease or maintain spending constant on a range of resources including but not limited to: journals, eBooks, print books, library technology, library staff, the library cafe and much more. In addition, faculty rate their level of satisfaction with a myriad of library resources including library seating and lighting, information literacy instruction, interlibrary loan services, online tutorials, reference assistance, ease of database searching, and the quality of the library collection and its subject experts, among other facets of the library experience. Faculty also offer their insights on what they would like to see in their academic libraries. Data is broken out by ten criteria including academic title, gender, university size, country, academic field of specialization and university ranking. Just a few of the 178-page report’s main findings are that: • When asked about the quality of help on reference questions, nearly a third of survey participants say that they are highly satisfied and 31.05% say that they are satisfied. • Tenured survey participants visited the library 2.7 times in the past month while untenured (not on a tenure track) participants visited 1.91 times and those on a tenure track visited 2.21 times. Participants with four or more annual classes taught visited the library 3.63 times in the past month, compared with 1.86 times among those teaching two classes and 1.34 times among those with no classes at all. • 8.92% of full professors sampled are somewhat satisfied with the ease of database searching at their academic libraries and 6.37% are dissatisfied or highly dissatisfied. • 25.97% of survey participants feel that their university library should spend more or much more on print books and 46.88% feel that their library should spend about the same. 25.39% of participants think that their library should spend less or much less on print books. Faculty from the following universities participated in the study: Australian National University, Brown University, Carleton University, Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia University. Drexel University, Emory University, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Griffith University, Imperial College London, McGill University, Miami University, Monash University, Penn State - University Park, Penn State College of Medicine, Pennsylvania State University, Princeton University, Rice University, Rutgers University, Saint Louis University, Staffordshire University, Swinburne University of Technology, Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin, University of Michigan, University College Dublin, University Nottingham, University of Alberta, University of Birmingham, University of California at Davis, University of California Riverside, University of California Santa Barbara, University of Chicago, University of Connecticut, University of Idaho, University of Leeds, University of Maryland, University of Maryland College Park, University of Michigan, University of Nebraska at Omaha, University of Nottingham University of South Florida, University of Strathclyde, University of Technology Sydney, University of Toronto, University of Utah, University of Western Australia, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Virginia Commonwealth University, Washington State University, Washington State University Tri-Cities, Western Michigan University and Yale University.