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Report of Contributed Papers Session, "Working in a Digital World. Session II: LRC's in Transition", sponsored by the Educational Media and Technologies Section of the Medical Library Association.
May 14-19, 1999 Chicago, IL.
Square Pegs, Round Holes: Making Sense of EMTS LRC Survey Data
NOTE: Complete article is available in this issue of MC Journal. Results of an Academic Health Sciences Learning Resource Center Survey
Presented by Christine Frank and William Karnoscak
Library of Rush University, Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical
Center
Reported by Eric H. Schnell
John A. Prior Health Sciences Library, The Ohio State University
On May 18, 1999 at a session sponsored by the EducationalMedia and Technologies Section (EMTS) at the Medical Library Association annual meeting in Chicago, Christine Frank & William Karnoscak detailed the results of the EMTS Learning Resource Center (LRC) Survey. In November 1996, a survey regarding learning resource center practices was sent out to the 213 member institutions of the Association of Academic Health Sciences Library Directors (AAHSL) and, in order to avoid duplication, to members of EMTS who were identified as NOT being affiliated with AASHL. Follow-up surveys were mailed to non-respondents at the end of December 1996.
After presenting a short history of previous surveys that collected LRC data, Ms Frank detailed their findings. Survey results and supporting documentation are available online at: http://bones.med.ohio-state.edu/emts/stats/. There were 98 respondents, giving a response rate of 46%. 71 being AAHSL libraries (74%), 10 independent medical school LRCs (10.40%), 6 hospital libraries (6.25%) with 9 others reporting. Of the LRCs responding, the majority was affiliated with a library (84%), while few were the sole provider of LRC services (35%). The remaining 65% had other LRC units within their institution.
The survey asked for the budgeted amount or average amount spent over the past three years; further broken down by the format types of audiovisuals, computer software and other computer applications. Some respondents grouped their expenditures differently than by these three format types. Most often, respondents combined expenditure for computer software and computer applications. Others combined for audiovisuals/computer software and another combined av/software/hard ware. Of those who responded, the average collection development budget was $18,849, with a range from $1,600 to $80,700. The survey also asked for the average amount spent on equipment, which totaled $25,796. The average total salary budget was $113,156, with the highest totaling over $480,000. Results for leasing and recurring operating budgets were not ranked due to low response rate. Only 3 of 31 respondents to the question on equipment leasing expended any funds in this category, indicated that this is not yet a standard practice. Less than half of the respondents answered the question about the recurring operating budgets.
The average LRC staff consists of 1.4 professionals, 1.8 non-professionals, and 1.8 students/part timers for an average total staff of 5 FTE. 81% of library-affiliated LRC may have some functions performed by other units within the library. The majority of supplemental LRC staffing supported cataloging (54 sites), systems (44), and acquisitions (42) tasks. With the amount of staffing available, the average number of hours the LRC was open per week was 103. The average LRC collection size consists of 2,051 titles and is primarily made up of audiovisual (91%) materials. Computer Assisted Instruction and other computer applications make up the next largest category (4.75%). Almost half (44%) have realia or models in their collections. 57% of the respondents tracked AV transactions and tare more likely to track collection usage outside the LRC (20%) rather than at it (19%). A small percentage (22%) uses gate count as a measure of LRC usage.
Microcomputers have taken a much larger role with the LRC. The majority of had a computer network (93%) with an average of 36 workstations. The majority of workstations are of the Win/Tel variety (68%). An LRC is less likely to track microcomputer usage with a small number tracking computer logins (25%), and fewer kept track of software transactions (16%). A surprisingly significant number had 24-hour student access to those workstations (33%) and had laptops available (34%). Access to the Internet is widely available at the LRC with the World Wide Web (83%) and Email (81%) being the most common. Application software is also readily available at the LRC, including word processing (88%), spreadsheet (86%), and presentation (83%) software.
Instruction is still being performed at the LRC with the most popular topics being Internet use (70%), database searching (64%), and library OPAC use (56%). In additional to traditional collection and instructional activities, the LRC is also providing other services. The most popular service is computer graphic imaging (41%) followed by multimedia authoring (39%) and disk recovery (39%) . The LRC is also involved in equipment rental/loan within institution (34%) and mediated Optical Character Recognition (OCR) scanning (32%).
Ms. Frank and Mr. Karnoscak's presentation was very well organized and well timed. It would have been impossible for them to present all the data they uncovered, which is why the raw data is being made available online for individuals to extrapolate. It is anticipated that future EMTS LRC Surveys will also be distributed in a similar manner.
Copyright 1999 Eric Schnell. All rights reserved. Commercial use requires permission of the author and the editor of this journal.
The author and editors do not maintain links to World Wide Web resources.
