The Survey of Library Database Licensing Practices, 2012 Edition

This 116-page report studies the database licensing practices of 60 academic, public, corporate, and law libraries from across the globe, representing more than a dozen countries and regions including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and continental Europe, as well as a handful of participants from developing countries. With more than 200 tables, the report covers issues such as the importance of mobile computing, the use of library consortia, the use of open access and electronic resources, and the indexing of blogs, wikis, and listservs. Statistics are given citing library content spending, overall licensing volume, renewal and cancellation rates, contract terms, content licensing pricing, and general library usage. How has database usage at the library changed over the past year? How do these libraries rate their most frequently used database vendors and what problems have they encountered? What subjects of database content are expected to benefit from an increase in spending? These questions and more are answered in this detailed study on the database licensing practices of a wide array of libraries