The Survey of Library & Museum Digitization Projects, 2013 Edition

Primary Research Group, ISBN 978-157440-230-8.

This report, based on detailed data from approximately 80 libraries and museums in the USA, Canada, the UK, Australia, continental Europe and other countries and regions, looks closely at the collection digitization efforts, covering budgets, costs, fundraising, staffing and manpower, use of consultants, outsourcing, revenue generation, productivity, software, marketing, licensing, cataloging, rights management, content selection, and many other issues in collection-related digitization. Data is broken out separately by many variables including but not limited to size of institution, by type of material digitized (ie text, photographs, audio-video) and separately for libraries and museums and by type of library, ie, public, special and academic.

Just a few of the study’s many findings are that:
• Digitization projects or departments in the sample have a mean annual budget of $105,907 for digitization.
• 37.97% of survey participants have an unfavorable outlook for raising money for digitization from sources outside the main institutional budget.
• Digitization spending will increase somewhat to substantially among 45.45% of institutions focusing their digitization efforts on film, video and audio recordings.
• Special libraries in the sample have a mean of 6.87 employees doing digitization work of some kind and devote nearly 7,300 hours in staff time to this work annually.
• A mean of 19.23% of the physical exhibits staged by survey participants are accompanied by a substantial online exhibit that reproduces a significant portion of or adds to the exhibit in a significant way.
• Organizations or divisions that focus their digitization efforts on text documents have outsourced a mean of 30.7% of their digitization, nearly twice as much as those focusing their efforts on photographs.
• 11.11% of survey participants share an asset management system with other departments or divisions of their institution.

The 165 page study is available directly from Primary Research Group or from major book distributors such as Baker & Taylor, Midwest Library Services and Amazon, and through eBook distributors such as MyiLibrary and Overdrive. A PDF version of the study is currently available from Primary Research Group and a print version can be ordered as well. For a table of contents and sample pages, or to place an order, view our website at www.PrimaryResearch.com or call us at 212-736-2316.