(20 August 2015) ARL has released the Library Investment Index for 2013–2014, the latest in this annual summary measure of the relative size of the university library members of the Association. Although similar to the ARL Membership Criteria Index in reflecting the investments made in research libraries, the ARL Library Investment Index is less affected by the electronic availability of content and, consequently, the rapidly changing context of library collections. Neither index attempts to measure a library’s services, quality of collections, or success in meeting the needs of users. The ARL Library Investment Index has been calculated beginning with data from 2002–2003.
The Chronicle of Higher Education published the ARL Library Investment Index 2013–2014 in the recent Almanac of Higher Education 2015 (Chronicle subscriber login required). The final data tables (XLS) that are published in the Chronicle are also available for free download from the ARL Statistics website. An interactive analytics version of the data is also freely available on the ARL Statistics site. More background on the ARL Library Investment Index is also provided on the ARL Statistics website.
The announcement is here.
