Primary Research Group has published Redesigning the College Library Building, 2013 Edition, ISBN 978-1-57440-213-1.

This report looks closely at college plans to restructure or alter space use in college libraries. The 190+ page study gives detailed data on college library plans to increase or decrease space for various departments and purposes, how they plan to develop and deploy their capital budgets, which types of projects and purposes are favored for the near future. The report helps librarians to answer questions such as: How many workstations will libraries deploy? Will the number increase or decrease? What about space allocated to information commons? Or to classroom space? What about office space? Collection space? Space for special collections? The report helps its end users to stay on the cutting edge, to find out what library planners are hoping to achieve in the near future.

The study also looks at budgets for repairs and for major renovations and gives data for overall budgets and on a per student enrolled basis. Data in the study is broken out by size and type of college, with separate data for community colleges, research universities, 4-year colleges, and those non-research universities that grant MA/PhD degrees.

Just a few of the many findings from this report are:

• 56.52 percent of all survey participants cite that spending on new library buildings has decreased over the past three years, including 75 percent of public schools and 100 percent of community colleges
• Libraries in the sample spent a median of $42,000 on new furniture in their last library redesign, or approximately $6.11 per full-time enrolled student
• Only 6 percent of survey participants believe book collection space in the library will increase over the next three years
• 41.67 percent of schools with 10,000 or more students have increased overall library space in the past three years, compared to just 8.33 percent of those with less than 1,500 students
• For those libraries in the sample that have experienced a major renovation within the past ten years, the mean rate of growth of student use of the library one year after the redesign is 39.36 percent
• Research universities spent a mean of $302,917 over the past three years on developing new library instructional centers or upgrading existing ones
• Just 2 percent of the sample says the library has decreased the space for electronic workstations over the past three years, while 62 percent say it has increased
• 34.62 percent of public schools in the sample made investments over the past three years to install, expand, or renovate a library cafe/restaurant, as compared to just 22.73 percent of private schools

The study is available in print and PDF format for $93.00. Site licenses cost $199.00. To view a table of contents, list of questions and participants, and sample data, or to order a copy of the report, please visit our website at www.PrimaryResearch.com.