The Numbers

Editor’s Note:

Each year libraries around the U.S. pull together figures that attempt to provide the answers to questions posed by various governmental and library-affiliated agencies. Each year the questions change, the forms change, the agencies doing the comparisons change, and the numbers we attempt to compare come from a rapidly spreading universe of information and materials. Every year we dip into our little galaxy to show our position in the scheme of things, and each time find we’re in a new place regarding how we must tell our story through the statistics.

The UTA Libraries report numbers regarding library staffing, usage, funding, new and existing materials on our shelves, and stuff we throw out. We now also report our virtual holdings, which are often times available through various state and academic consortia, but for which we don’t make “shelf space.” We may outright “own” 130 electronic books (ebooks) but in reality have access to 38,000 through our subscriptions and affiliations.

Here are some of the numbers that are easiest to quantify:

  To make your own comparisons, visit the National Center for Educational Statistics, Libraries Statistics Program, Academic Libraries:. “The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) collects data biennially from 4,000 postsecondary institutions in order to provide an overview of academic libraries nationally and by state.” http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/libraries/academic.asp