Market research and data services provider Research and Markets, Ireland, has announced the addition of the 'Academic Library Cataloging Practices Benchmarks' report to its offerings. The report presents data from a survey of the cataloging practices of about 80 North American academic libraries.
In more than 630 tables of data and related commentary from participating librarians and analysts, the 254 page report gives a broad overview of academic library cataloging practices. It covers topics ranging from outsourcing to the selection and deployment of personnel, and the state of continuing education in cataloging.
Survey participants 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.
The survey noted that about 27.3 percent 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. Also, it was noted that about 24.7 percent 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. More information on the survey is available at http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/b30ff3/academic_library_c.
