ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


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How w ired  a re  w e ? New 
data on lib ra ry  technology

By Mary J o  Lynch

Two-thirds o f academic 
institutions have Internet access

D o all academic libraries have electronic catalogs? Can they be accessed from off 
campus? How many four-year college libraries 
subscribe to electronic journals? How many li­
braries in two-year schools have access to the 
Internet?

Answers to those questions and many oth­
ers w ere sought in a study done for the Corpo­
ration for Public Broadcasting (CPB) by SRI 
International (formerly Stanford Research In­
stitute). CPB recently published a brief sum­
mary report o f this study (available by contact­
ing CPB P ublications, 901 E Street, N.W., 
Washington, DC 20004; (202) 879-9764). Be­
cause that summary does not mention librar­
ies, CPB gave ALA permission to present some 
of the key findings on that topic to the library 
community.

Study design
In the spring o f 1994, CPB conducted a com­
prehensive, m ultifaceted national survey of 
1,000 higher education institutions concerning 
the instructional uses of communications tech­
nology, including audio, video, multimedia, and 
computers. The study was done to help CPB 
plan for the future of public telecommunica­
tions. It included six institution-level question­
naires designed to assess the following topics: 
use o f com puter technologies in the libraries; 
availability and way in which com puters are 
used for instructional purposes; use o f audio, 
video, and multimedia technologies in the class­
room; use o f audio, video, multimedia, and 
computer technologies in teacher education; use

of distance education technologies; and insti­
tutional policies and chief academic officers’ 
perceptions of current and future use of in­
structional technologies. Q uestionnaires on 
those topics w ere sent to a random  sample of 
institutions stratified by using the Carnegie Clas­
sification. In addition, questionnaires w ere sent 
to a subsample of faculty in 100 of those insti­
tutions and telephone interviews w ere con­
ducted with a national sample o f students. This 
article summarizes results of the questionnaire 
on libraries. In the text and in the bar charts I 
refer to the seven Carnegie Categories used in 
the CPB study.

Electronic catalogs
Most academic libraries have electronic cata­
logs today, and many that d o n ’t have them now 
will have them  within a few years. Figure 1 
shows the percent that have electronic cata­
logs and the percent that will soon add them 
by level of institution. Virtually all o f the cata­

. . . lib ra ry  staff a re  the 
m ost lik e ly  g ro u p  a t all 
types o f institutions to 
p ro v id e lead ersh ip  or 
direction in accessing 
online a n d /o r  CD-ROM 
d a tab ase s.

logs are accessible from terminals/PCs in the 
library. Well over 50% can also be accessed 
through dial-up access from outside the library, 
through a campus network, and through an out­
side network, except for public two-year insti­

M ary Jo Lynch is director o f  the ALA Office f o r  Research a n d  Statistics; e-mail: mary.jo.lynch@ala.org

mailto:mary.jo.lynch@ala.org


9 8 /C& RL News

F ig u re 1
E le c tr o n ic  C a ta lo g s

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S u b s c r ip t io n s  t o  E le c tr o n ic  J o u r n a ls



F eb ru a ry 1 9 9 6 /  9 9

tutions w here the percentages for those three 
types of access are 48%, 35%, and 24% respec­
tively. Figures are not available for private two- 
year schools because there w ere too few re­
spondents to provide reliable estimates.

CD-ROMs and electronic journals
The CPB fo u n d  th at m ultim edia CD-ROMs 
w ere available for use in 57% of academic li­
braries and text-only CD-ROMs w ere available 
in 85% of libraries. These CD-ROMs w ere rarely 
available for loan outside the library. Computer 
software was available for use in 54% o f the 
libraries, with 20% allowing loan. Overall, more 
than a fourth of th e libraries subscribe to 
electronic journals, but there is considerable 
variation by type o f institution as shown in Fig­
ure 2.

Bibliographic an d full-text resources
Access to external online bibliographic re­
sources (e.g., DIALOG, ERIC) is almost univer­
sal in doctoral, comprehensive, and liberal arts 
institutions. In two-year schools, 63% of public 
institutions and 37% of private institutions of­
fer such access. In libraries that offer these ser­
vices they are available at no cost to students at

45% o f institutions and to faculty at no cost at 
50% o f institutions.

The access figures are low er for CD-ROM- 
based external bibliographic resources. Among 
the doctoral and comprehensive institutions the 
range is from a low o f 52% (private doctoral) 
to a high o f 67% (public doctoral), with the 
comprehensive schools in between. CD-ROM 
bibliographic resources are held by 54% o f lib­
eral arts college libraries, 39% of public two- 
year schools, an d  36% o f private tw o-year 
schools. There w ere no doctoral-level institu­
tions that did not offer any access to external 
databases (online or CD-ROM), and less than 
10% of comprehensive and liberal arts institu­
tions lacked that access. Among two-year insti­
tutions, 27% of the public schools and 48% of 
the private schools did not provide access to 
either external online bibliographic resources 
or external CD-ROM-based bibliographic re­
sources.

External online full-text databases are offered 
by over 70% of doctoral institutions, 43% of 
public comprehensive, and less than 40% of all 
other categories. At 61% of institutions that of­
fer them, online full-text resources are avail­
able gratis to both students and faculty.

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C h a n g e s  M ad e in  t h e  P a st T h r e e  Y ea rs 

t o  S u p p o r t E le c tr o n ic  A c c e s s  to  M a teria ls

Institutional leadership in academ ic 
libraries
According to chief academic officers w ho re­
sponded, library staff are the most likely group 
at all types of institutions to provide leadership 
or direction in accessing online and/or CD-ROM 
databases. At almost three-fourths of institutions 
(71%), library staff provide leadership or direc­
tion in this area. They are especially likely to 
do so at private comprehensive and private 
doctoral universities (82% and 90% respec­
tively). The next most likely group to provide 
leadership in this area is academic computing 
staff (42%).

Internet access an d  training b y staff 
m embers
Two-thirds of the responding institutions re­
ported that their libraries are connected to the 
Internet. Figure 3 (previous page) shows the 
variation by type of institution. Among those 
that have access, 80% report that library staff 
provide training and/or answer questions about 
the Internet.

Shifting resources
Almost all institutions reported some changes 
in the three years preceding the survey to sup­
port increased reliance on electronic media. 
Figure 4 shows the percent of each type of 
institution reporting three kinds of change: re­
sources have been increased for library auto­
mation activities and/or electronic technologies; 
resources have been shifted from print media 
to electronic media; resources have been in­
creased for training end users an d /o r library 
staff in use of electronic media. Figures are not 
available for private two-year schools.

Future plans
ALA will be conducting a survey of these top­
ics plus more in the spring of 1996 using a 
similar sample design (i.e., Carnegie Catego­
ries). This is a joint project of the ALA Office 
for Research and Statistics (ORS) and the Asso­
ciation o f College an d  R esearch Libraries 
(ACRL), with financial support from Ameritech 
Library Services. A report will be published by 
ALA in fall 1996. ■