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2005 Product SurveyIn late 2005, the National Licensing Proposal Reference Group surveyed Australian libraries to find out what electronic products they had interest in.
BackgroundThe survey was conducted following the National Licensing Forum in October 2005, to confirm the results of Forum discussions. The survey instrument was made available on the National Library's website and Forum members encouraged their sectors to complete the survey. A total of 766 usable responses were received, covering all library sectors. There were very good numbers of responses from school libraries and public libraries, the groups for whom national licences may offer most benefit. To some extent the numbers and origin of responses do appear to reflect the encouragement the sector/state received from one or more members of the Reference Group, so is not totally representative. Nonetheless, the numbers are large enough that these results provide a good guide to the needs of Australian libraries for access to online resources.
ResponsesThe responses indicated considerable variety in the number and subject matter of existing holdings of electronic resources, and also indicated that there are libraries in Australia which do not have the financial resources needed to access resources at present.
ConclusionsThere appears to be a high level of interest in pursuing the national licensing initiative. The issue was raised in the recommendations of the 2003 report of the Senate Enquiry into Libraries in the Online Environment, and a range of sectoral groups have been negotiating pricing or licensing resources on behalf of their members for some years. However, apart from the Cochrane database, which is licensed for Australia by the National Institute of Clinical Studies, there is no general national licensing of electronic resources. Over 90% of respondents to the survey were interested in taking advantage of national licensing arrangements. There appears to be a high level of interest in pursuing the national licensing initiative. The issue was raised in the recommendations of the 2003 report of the Senate Enquiry into Libraries in the Online Environment, and a range of sectoral groups have been negotiating pricing or licensing resources on behalf of their members for some years. However, apart from the Cochrane database, which is licensed for Australia by the National Institute of Clinical Studies, there is no general national licensing of electronic resources. Over 90% of respondents to the survey were interested in taking advantage of national licensing arrangements. Over 20% of respondents were not at all interested in the licensing of a health resource, and only 21% ranked Health as their first or second choice. Interestingly, Health and Wellness Resource Centre is the third most commonly subscribed-to product at the present time among the respondents.
Detailed resultsNumber of responses / locations* the majority of Joint use libraries (16 of 25) are a school/public combination.
Present subscriptions to electronic resources187 respondents (including 134, or 44%, of school library respondents) indicated they do not currently subscribe to any electronic resources. The majority of respondents (76%) indicated that they already have access to some electronic resources, and in some sectors, quite a large number of electronic resources. Schools appear to offer the least access at present. The resources subscribed to by the greatest numbers of respondents are:
A more detailed breakdown by major library type (for resources with 5 or more subscriptions in total) is provided below. NB* For resources not specifically named in questionnaire, there may be many more subscriptions than are reflected in responses, because respondents named some products but may have omitted others. With many hundreds available it was not possible to do a comprehensive survey of subscribed resources. No universities, for example, named Informit products other than APAFT, although many subscribe to most of the available Informit databases.
ABI/Inform
ANZ Newstand
Australia New Zealand Reference Centre
APAFT
Biography Resource Centre
Building Code of Australia
Business Who�s Who of Australia
CCH
eLibrary Australasia
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Factiva
Grolier
Health & Wellness Resource Centre
Informit (various)
InfoTrac
Lexis/Nexis
Literature Resource Centre
MacquarieNet
Magpies
NewsBank
Newstext
Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford Reference Online
Science Resource Centre
SCIS
Standards Australia
Weblinks
WebsterWorld
Who�s Who in Australia
World Book
Affordability of subscriptionsOver 700 respondents indicated an interest in subscribing to products through a national licensing system. Of those not interested, the majority were school libraries (30), some of which are constrained by factors other than the licence cost itself (lack of other infrastructure). One indicated that needs are fully met by existing free Internet resources and search engines
Preferences for national licensingRespondents indicated their support for the three nominated product groups. The overall result showed significantly less support for health resources than for general reference or news and current affairs resources. General reference:
News and current affairs:
Health:
Not all libraries assigned priorities to all resources, and the same priority was given to more than one type of resource by some respondents. The high priority products (ranked 1 or 2) identified by each library sector, with the % of respondents in that sector identifying this as their top priority, re noted below. School libraries:
Public libraries:
Special libraries:
Tertiary libraries:
Joint use libraries:
National/State/Territory libraries:
Other libraries or unknown sector:
Other resourcesThe survey also asked if respondents could identify any other products which they regard as very important for their libraries The variety of responses to this question was very broad. There were numerous requests for multidisciplinary resources, and many for subject-specific resources. There was some interest expressed in e-books, and for bibliographic databases. Other resource types mentioned included (but is not limited to): Car manuals, biography, PC-based training packages, family history, a children's encyclopaedia, audio books, scientific / environmental resources for schoolchildren, Standards. Several respondents provided answers which indicate that access to electronic resources is overshadowed by the need for more basic resources and infrastructure:
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