Primary Research Group has published Law Library Benchmarks, 2014 Edition, ISBN 978-1-57440-285-8.

The 154-page study gives extensive data and commentary on law library spending plans and management practices including current and future expected budgets, spending on salaries, and materials such as online databases, print reporters, online and print directories, books, e-books, journals and other information resources. The report also looks at use of particular types and brands of information resources, at cost recovery efforts and at law library efforts to reduce costs and improve productivity through better negotiation and other tactics. The study also presents detailed data on library measures to enhance mobile device access and to use social media, blogs and other internet resources in the law library service effort.

The report presents data from 60 law libraries from the United States and Canada including law firm libraries, university law libraries, courthouse libraries, private company libraries and others, with data presented separately for each library type. The data is also broken out by library and parent institution size. The law firms in the sample employed a mean of 188 lawyers. A list of survey participants is available on our website.

The study helps its readers to answer questions such as: By how much will university law libraries increase or reduce spending on journals in 2014? What percentage of law firm libraries plan to reduce space allocated to the library? What percentage of book budgets are accounted for by e-books? How have law libraries dealt with the downturn in the legal profession over the past five years?

Just a few of the report's many findings are that:

• For 37.5% of survey participants, the overall library budget decreased in 2013.
• The courthouse libraries in the sample had the largest budget decreases, a mean of 7.25%.
• Libraries in the sample spent a mean of $320,931 on online databases in 2013; spending is expected to increase slightly in 2014 to $330,688, or by about 3.3%.
• The materials/content budget is nearly evenly split between print resources and electronic resources; the former accounted for a mean of 50.52% of the budget, the latter 49.48%.

The study is available directly from Primary Research Group and also from major distributors of books and research reports. Print and PDF versions are available for $132.00. Site licenses are also available. For a table of contents, list of tables, free excerpt, and participants list, visit our website at www.PrimaryResearch.com.