Took a look at this article out of College and Research Libraries (CR&L) on the 2021 ACRL Academic Library Trends and Statistics Survey. I can only look at the highlights because you need to be subscriber to see more, which I am not. The article has a enough to get a basic picture of what is going on.
This is a survey designed to help show how libraries have academic libraries have an impact in their institutions and show value to their users and stakeholders. Notice that this survey would cover part of the period of the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey has a standard set of questions, but this edition also featured a set of additional questions specific to topics in library instruction and presentations to groups.
Some details with a bit of comment from me:
- Data was collected from 1,533 libraries. The response rate was close to 42%.
- The number of FTE (full time equivalent) librarians stayed stable over the past three annual surveys. However the number of FTE student workers went down by 40%.
- In person reference transactions and library instruction declined. This is less surprising given the Hard Times and the pandemic. Like other campuses, we did have a period of campus closing down where we went fully virtual. It is 2023, and we are still not quite recuperating in terms of getting classes to come back into the library for instruction nor in terms of traffic in the building.
- Virtual transactions and consultations went up. Also the survey found more libraries delivered services online. Given the Hard Times, that is not surprising either. We did our part to deliver more services online.
To be honest, kind of nice to see some numbers, but there is nothing that is earth shattering so to speak.
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