Media industry-focused research and advisory firm Outsell, Inc., US, has released the second annual ‘Library Market Size, Share & Forecast Report’. The report shows that libraries are shifting from content spending to technology spending - digitising collections, acquiring native digital content, and developing digital storage and retrieval systems. As the Google Books Library Project continues, and new vendors scan and package content, further disruptions are afoot, says the report.
The Outsell report sizes and segments the content controlled by the global library market. The analysis covers government, public, academic, school and corporate libraries - physical as well as digital. It projects a reduction in spending from $24.8 billion last year to $24.4 billion in 2011, driven by the economic slowdown. It also covers the market for library content across North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Africa-Middle East; content spending by library and information type (scientific, legal, etc.); analysis of key market drivers; and essential actions for content vendors looking to maintain or increase market share.
The report also references another Outsell study of business information users. This shows a surge in respondents who prefer to start research through their organisations’ intranets - up from 5 percent in 2001, to 25 percent in 2008 - rather than through the open web.
According to Ned May, Director and Lead Analyst at Outsell, who led the research, this shift in searching behaviour means digital libraries and repositories will increasingly become go-to contacts for relevant and easily accessible business information. Libraries will remain vital in driving and managing content to meet this user demand, he emphasises.
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