The ACRL 2015 Annual Survey is now open. Academic libraries of all types are invited to complete it. The survey focuses on library staffing, collections, and resource-sharing. The data submitted in the survey should come from an institution’s last full fiscal year that ended before October 1, 2015.
Those administering the survey have three specific goals.
- To use survey responses to help complete the Academic Libraries part of the IPEDS (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System) survey
- To make the responses to the ACRL survey available a few months after the survey period comes to a close; the Academic Libraries part of the IPEDS survey won’t be available for a year to a year-and-a-half after the ACRL survey period ends
- To begin reusing certain criteria that were part of the biennial NCES Academy Library Survey, which has not been administered since 2012
Some of the areas that the ACRL Annual Survey covers include the following.
Staffing Types, FTEs and Expenses–position classifications (librarian, other professional staff, other paid staff, student assistant), salaries and wages, number of hours worked per week
Expenses (Other Than Staff)–materials/service cost, operations and maintenance expenses
Library Collections–physical books (including government documents and serial backfiles), digital/electronic books (including government documents), serial titles, databases, physical media, digital/electronic media
Library Consortia–consortium members sharing all resources, consortium members sharing partial resources (digital/electronic collection, digital/electronic circulation), institutional repositories
Library Services–physical library circulation and usage, digital/electronic library circulation and usage, e-book usage, e-journal usage, information services to individuals, virtual reference services, information services to groups, number of hours open in a typical academic session, gate counts, total interlibrary loans and documents provided to other libraries, total interlibrary loans and documents received
The deadline for completing the survey is Thursday, April 16. To log in to the survey, go here. One can also access instructions, a worksheet, and trend questions from the log-in page.
To look at IPEDS data from past years, go here.