Library Use of Video & Audio

The report looks closely at how academic, public and special libraries are acquiring and using their video and audio collections. It includes data on price discounts received from vendors of audio/video materials, cataloging trends, budgets, spending on digitization and upgrades to new formats, trends in licensing and performance rights, staff size for AV departments, the influence of emerging mediums such as YouTube and other video sharing sites, the development of library video production facilities and much more.

Among the report's many findings are that:

• 10.64% of video spending by the libraries in the sample was accounted for by video accessed online or streamed.
• A mean of 88.26% of library spending on audio-visual resources comes from the departmental budget of the libraries themselves, while 7.39% comes from non-library departments, 1.01% from grants and endowments, and 3.34% from other sources.
• 34.69% of the libraries surveyed reached licensing deals with video suppliers to legally provide digitized versions of their videos to a range of viewers within their organizations.
• Slightly more than a quarter of the libraries in the sample have a multimedia studio or center at which library patrons can view and edit video and learn about the use of new visual and audio mediums.
• Public libraries have been hit hardest by theft of audio/video materials, with a mean loss of $4,343 over the past three years.
• Suggestions by library patrons accounted for a mean of 36.1% of the materials purchasing decisions by the libraries in the sample.
• Public libraries say that a mean of 15.56% of vendors are open to price negotiation, while academic libraries feel they can negotiate with about 30% of their vendors.