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Press Release from Primary Research Group, Inc.
Primary Research Group has published Academic Library Cataloging Practices Benchmarks
(ISBN 1-57440-106-8). This 254 page report presents data from a survey of the cataloging
practices of approximately 80 North American academic libraries. In more than 630 tables of
data and related commentary from participating librarians and our analysts, the report gives a
broad overview of academic library cataloging practices related to outsourcing, selection and
deployment of personnel, salaries, the state of continuing education in cataloging, and much
more. Survey participants also discuss how they define the catalogers range of responsibilities,
how they train their catalogers, how they assess cataloging quality, whether they use cataloging
quotas or other measures to spur productivity, what software and other cataloging technology
they use and why, and how they make outsourcing decisions and more. Data is broken out by
size and type of college and for public and private colleges.
Just a few of the reports many findings are presented below:
More than 70% of the libraries in the sample say that their catalogers have salary levels
that are comparable to those of public service librarians at their institutions.
About 27.3% of the survey participants routinely use paraprofessional staff for original
cataloging. Public colleges were more than three times more likely than private colleges to use paraprofessionals for original cataloging, and larger colleges were more than twice as
likely as smaller ones to do so.
41.56% of the libraries in the sample outsource authority control, obtaining new and
updated authority records.
About 15.6% of the libraries in the sample outsource the cataloging of e-journals; close to
28% of research universities do so.
20.78% of libraries in the sample use MarcEdit or other MARC editor to preview records
and globally edit to local standards prior to loading.
29.7% of the libraries in the sample have technical services areas that track turnaround
time from Acquisitions receipt to Cataloging to shelf-ready distribution.
About 24.7% of the libraries in the sample use paraprofessional support staff for master
bibliographic record enrichment in OCLC. Most of those doing so were public colleges and
offered beyond the B.A. degree.
Authority control experience was considered a very important criterion for hiring by only
8.11% of survey participants, while a bit more than 35% considered it important. 21.62%
considered authority control experience not so important as a hiring criterion.
The mean number of librarians in mostly cataloging functions that are likely to retire over
the next five years was a mean of only 0.27. The figure was nearly 0.6 for colleges with
more than 10,000 students.
Only 11.27% of survey participants said that recent hires were well prepared in subject
genre/thesauri systems, and close to 24% said that they were prepared.
Academic Library Cataloging Practices Benchmarks is available from Primary Research Group
or from major book distributors. The price of the report is $89.50; $98 for a PDF version; site
licenses are also available. For a table of contents, list of participants and sample data, go to our
website at www.PrimaryResearch.com.
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