New
Call for Proposals for SPEC Survey Topics 2010—Deadline July 24, 2009
SPEC Survey Distribution
ARL gathers data from its member libraries in a variety of ways. The two most prominent methods are the annual statistical compilations conducted by the ARL Statistics and Measurement Program and the SPEC surveys. Six SPEC surveys are distributed annually to ARL member libraries via this ARL Web page. Each member library has a designated SPEC Survey Liaison who coordinates distribution of the surveys to the relevant person in the library and tracks survey responses.
2009 SPEC Surveys
SPEC Survey on Leave and Professional Development Benefits
This survey is for the human resource officer or other senior administrator responsible for policy decisions about the various leave and professional development benefits available to librarians. The benefits covered in this survey include sick, vacation, and holiday leave, and leave and financial support for professional development, employee education and training, and internships. The benefits not considered in this survey, but well represented in other surveys, include retirement and insurance plans. In determining the scope of this survey, the authors wanted to develop an understanding of the less researched and more varied plans currently offered to professional library staff and benefits over which library administrators would typically have some plan design authority. These benefits represent an area ripe for exploration.
Results of this survey should help provide a better understanding of the prevalence of these leave benefits and identify some best practices for plan administration and design. Additionally, it is intended that the results of the survey will provide some assessment of market equity for these valuable benefits.
This survey was designed by Cathleen Martyniak, Chair, Preservation Department, and Brian Keith, Financial and Human Resources Officer, University of Florida.
Survey posted June 30, 2009.
Survey deadline is July 24, 2009.
SPEC Survey on Processing Decisions for Manuscripts & Archives
Libraries, archives, and cultural institutions hold millions of items that have never been adequately described. These items are all but unknown to, and unused by, the scholars these organizations aim to serve. According to the Society of American Archivists’ Glossary of Archival Terminology, processing is the arrangement, description, and housing of archival materials for storage and use by patrons. Beyond this basic definition, processing must include prioritization, determining the levels of arrangement and description for each collection, and establishing standards and best practices. Ultimately, processing planning and management decisions become the essential building blocks for making these collections accessible to patrons.
This survey is designed to investigate current policies and practices for processing manuscript and archival collections (but not rare books and serials), including setting processing priorities; creating and implementing policies and procedures; and processing metrics.
This survey was designed by Pam Hackbart-Dean, Director, Special Collections Research Center, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and Elizabeth Slomba, University Archivist, University of New Hampshire.
Survey posted March 30, 2009.
This survey is now closed.
SPEC Survey on e-Book Collections
Several factors are coming together heralding a wider acceptance of e-books in an academic setting. The open access journal movement, Google Scholar, Project Gutenberg, and increasingly competitive e-book prices may encourage many libraries and their users to adopt e-books. According to a 2008 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, 69% of university research libraries plan to increase spending on e-books over the next two years, with a higher rate for non-US libraries. Comments to the article highlight some of the obstacles faced by libraries: user unfamiliarity with e-books, an anti e-book sentiment, and a fear of library obsolescence. This discussion reflects the debate on Amazon’s Kindle Forum and other Internet boards over e-books versus print books, the best e-reader/format, and publishers’ digital rights management. However, users are increasingly accustomed to and expect immediate access to materials and are comfortable with electronic formats thus making an e-book collection attractive to an academic library and its clientele.
This survey is designed to examine the current use of e-books in ARL member libraries; their plans for implementing, increasing, or decreasing access to e-books; purchasing, cataloging, and collection management issues; and issues in marketing to and in usage by library clientele.
This survey was designed by Catherine Anson, Director of Sponsored Research, and Ruth R. Connell, Head, Collection Management and Systems Administration, at John Carroll University.
Survey posted March 16, 2009.
This survey is now closed.
SPEC Survey on Public Engagement
“Public engagement” refers to the activities or programs that a library or institution of higher education pursues in order to provide resources and services to members of the communities outside its campus. Through public engagement programs, the unique collections, resources, and expert knowledge that reside in the library are placed in service to the community, especially as those services may further the goals of cultural awareness, civic responsibility, or lifelong learning.
This survey is designed to determine the degree to which research libraries are leading or contributing to campus programs related to community service and public engagement, e.g., the development and delivery of library service programs to cooperative extension agencies, arts groups, community organizations, K-12 schools, public libraries, and/or professional communities, including librarians, social workers, teachers, and health care professionals. This survey is not designed to identify trends in liaison librarianship or activities designed to enhance engagement between the library and the campus community.
This survey was designed by Scott Walter, Associate University Librarian for Services, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Lori Goetsch, Dean of Libraries, Kansas State University.
Survey posted February 9, 2009.
This survey is now closed.
SPEC Survey on Author Addenda
Faculty at many large academic institutions have endorsed author addenda, to be used by authors when signing a publication agreement. These addenda, if accepted by the publisher, allow the author to retain rights to use their work in several ways. Some examples are: freely posting their article on their own Web sites, depositing copies of their work in a repository (institutional or disciplinary), and using their work in future works, such as new editions or in ways not yet imagined. In short, an addendum allows authors to share their research more widely, and gives them the added benefit of increasing the impact of their research and creative outputs.
This survey is designed to investigate whether and how ARL member libraries are educating authors about their copyrights and promoting the use of author addenda to publication agreements. It explores which addenda have been endorsed and/or promoted, how the library is supporting authors’ use of addenda, which library staff are promoting author addenda and how they are trained, what kinds of activities the library has engaged in to educate authors about using addenda, etc.
If libraries at your institution have differing practices, multiple responses to this survey are welcomed.
This survey was designed by Karen Fischer, Collections Analysis & Planning Librarian, University of Iowa.
Survey posted February 2, 2009.
This survey is now closed.
SPEC Survey on Public Access Policies
The concept of a public access policy for research results is based on the premise that government-funded research results should be freely available without barriers to taxpayers who provide support for the funding. With the recent enactment of the US National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Policy on Access to Research Outputs, much attention has been devoted to public access policies. Many academic and research libraries have developed resources and services to support authors who are required to comply with these policies.
This survey seeks to identify what kinds of library resources and services have been developed to support author compliance with public access policies, which resources are used by library staff to learn about public access policies, and whether there are partnerships and collaborations outside the library. It investigates who coordinates compliance activities and their strategies for disseminating resources and services to authors who are subject to these policies.
If libraries at your institution have differing practices, multiple responses to this survey are welcomed. The authors are particularly interested in responses from science and health sciences libraries, in addition to the main library.
This survey was designed by Cathy Sarli, Scholarly Communications Specialist, Ellen Dubinsky, Librarian, Bob Engeszer, Associate Director, Translational Research Support, and Ruth Lewis, Biology and Mathematics Librarian, Washington University in St. Louis.
Survey posted February 2, 2009.
This survey is now closed.
