U.S. Community College Libraries: A Snapshot of Priorities & Perspectives

This new report details findings from a study OCLC conducted with libraries in mid-2011 to learn about their priorities, initiatives, thoughts on the future of their service points and the sources they use to keep up with developments in the library field.

Select Key Findings

• Most community college library staff:
• • Consider licensed e-collections and e-books to be their top priority and current initiative
  • Believe their current library location structure will be the same in five years
  • Rely mostly on listservs and email to stay current—a few use social media.
• Community college library staff are less likely than other academic library and public library staff to expect that a national digital library will exist in the next five years.
• Community college libraries are distinctively putting more focus on outreach and library instruction and their back-end office technology compared to other academic libraries.

Nearly 200 community college library staff including directors, managers and librarians participated in the study.