HIGHLIGHTS OF LIBRARIAN SURVEY

SIAM (Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics) sent an electronic survey to members of various divisions of the Special Libraries Association (SLA). Here are some of the highlights from the results. Most (62 percent) of the respondents work in academic or government libraries.

What do you believe is the single toughest issue facing scientific/technical librarians today? Finances, including cost of publications (59 percent); technology, especially keeping up (31 percent).

Is your institution considering the creation of an open access repository for faculty research? Yes (38 percent), no (40 percent), already have one (22 percent). Do the holdings show up on Google Scholar search results? Yes (33 percent), no (44 percent), don’t know (23 percent).

Does your library use RSS feeds or TOC alerts from publishers to inform users when a new online article has been published? Yes—most have customers sign up for alerts directly (44 percent), no (56 percent).

Does your library subscribe to online books through a vendor? Yes (68 percent), no (32 percent). Vendors with “adequate coverage” Safari for computer science, Knovel.

What is the best way to inform you a new journals that you may wish to add? Email alerts (35 percent), messages to electronic lists (21 percent), direct mail (21 percent).