Marco CastellanBusiness Development ManagerPublishers Communication Group

Library Market TrendsLondon, 29 November 2011

PCG and Market Trends

• PCG sales and marketing consultancy, part of Publishing Technology

• Carry out two yearly research projects:

1-Trends in Journal Subscription Renewals and Cancellations;2 - Annual Library Budget Survey;

• One ad hoc Survey on Corporate libraries.

Subscription Renewals and Cancellations

• Detailed example of trends affecting journal subscription cancellations and renewals for scholarly publishers;

• Survey carried out yearly since 2003;

• Last 5 years are summarized, nearly 200 Renewal Campaigns completed over this period, including nearly 47,000 subscriptions.

Renewals and Cancellations Trends

• Pressures on budgets in the last 5 years have resulted in increased cancellations;

• The cancellation and renewal rates have not varied at a significant rate, but cancellations appear to be on an upward trend;

• Main factors: availability of content from multiple channels, usage statistics and faculty recommendations;

• Tool for recapturing lapsed subscriptions, for building relationships with librarians and collecting invaluable market research on the purchasing behaviours and preferences of libraries around the world.

Library Budget Survey

• Yearly telephone survey to gather librarians’ outlook on the following year budget cycle;

• Academic, corporate, medical, and government libraries;

• Institutes in North America, Europe and in the Asia Pacific;

• During the most recent survey, 416 institutional libraries were included;

• Data breaks down trends by territory, type of institutions and resources.

Corporate Survey

• Survey of more than 240 Corporate librarians across different sectors in North America;

• Done on behalf of Springer in April and May 2011 for a series of “Corporate Library Summits“ in North America;

• Results obtained from a 24 question online survey and more in-depth telephone interviews;

• Objective was to learn how different corporate libraries discover, review, trial, purchase and use scholarly resources.

Corporate Survey

• Generally smaller, more efficient, and more careful with their money than academics;

• Tend to purchase a lot of single articles of single book titles as opposed to subscribing to large databases;

• Don’t do “collection development” but mostly respond to researchers demands: more "reactive" or "responsive“ to their users' requests;

• Both “Users” and “Usage” are at the center of the libraries discovery, review, trial, purchase processes;

• Less likely than academic libraries to purchase one-time content.

Historical Trends in Library Budgets Predictions

• From 2003 to 2008 low but consistent library budget increases were predicted (between 0.2% to 1.1%);

• In the last two years library budget decreases have been predicted of respectively 0.9% for 2011 and 0.1% for 2012; • Universities have consistently predict the largest budget increases over the years;

• Asia Pacific, South America and ‘Emerging Countries’ have consistently predicted the largest increases;

• North America has most often predicted decreases in library budgets over the last 9 years;

• It is estimated that next year approximately 49.3% of the library materials budget will be spent on electronic information sources compared to 24% in 2004.

Thank you!

For all the reports go to:

http://www.pcgplus.com/research.htm

Or ask me at:

mcastellan@pcgplus.com