The Changing Roles Of Content Deployment Functions: Academic Information Professionals

Information professionals in academia are fundamentally restructuring the way they provide services to their organizations, in response to budgetary pressures and technological developments. Those are the key themes of this Briefing, which is based on interviews with over 328 information professionals in education. The Briefing shows how self-service models of service are becoming more prevalent, even as libraries focus on certain high-value services and de-emphasize the physical library as the primary delivery mechanism. Market penetration is good, with academic libraries reaching over 48 percent of their potential users with their services; small institutions perform even better, with 91 percent penetration. Academic libraries expect to be dealing with fewer vendors in the future. Other data includes reporting relationships, budgets, content spending by information type, and staffing levels. For academic information professionals, this Briefing provides key functional benchmarks and trend analysis, and prescribes a targeted approach rather than an 'all things to all people' service level. For commercial content vendors, it prescribes products with essential content that fit the self-service needs of academic libraries and their users.