Academic Library Website Benchmarks
A report published by Primary Research Group provides data on 82 North American college libraries concerning their website policies and development plans. Academic Library Website Benchmarks is currently available in PDF for $92.40 and will be available in print for $85.00 in early January 2008.
The 125+ page study presents detailed data on the composition of the academic library web staff, relations with the college and library information technology departments, use of consultants and freelancers, budgets, future plans, website marketing methods, website revision plans, usage statistics, use of software, development of federated search and online forms and much more. Data is broken out by enrollment size, public and private status, Carnegie Class, as well as for libraries with or without their own web staff.
According to a post on Web4Lib concerning this study:
- More than 75% of respondents plan a redesign in the next two years.
- Nearly 42% of respondents using a content editing system provided by central college web staff.
- Of the libraries that use a content management system, just of 25% expressed satisfaction; another 31% were not completely satisfied and will change either their CMS or their policies.
- Almost half of the respondents selected JavaScript as the most commonly used scripting language on the college website.
- 80% use cascading style sheets to some extent.
