The O'Reilly Radar blog takes a look at the downward trend in circulation and reference questions at ARL libraries. Interesting comments from all angles, including a hectoring librarian. (via corplibrarian/LSW)
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Sigh. Peter Brantley’s essay uses the universal “libraries” for misleadingly-presented graphs that represent a subset of ARL libraries. Since ARL libraries don’t necessarily map well to academic libraries in general, and since public libraries–a bigger subset of “libraries”–show generally increasing circulation, this is a case of absurd universalism. Add a bunch of qualifiers and it might or might not be an interesting discussion–albeit with way too much emphasis on Library As Business.
Comment by walt crawford — July 18, 2007 @ 6:14 pm
I didn’t think it was all that misleading, but then I know what “ARL” means and non-librarians will gloss over that (though he does spell it out, and says in the first line that he’s talking about “a small number of very large research libraries”).
I didn’t have room to put in my brief del.icio.us post that I’m sure the trends are different at Colorado College, but I don’t have the numbers at hand to see how different.
Comment by Steve Lawson — July 18, 2007 @ 8:19 pm