Academic and special libraries

Non-local loans: loans from one library to another or loans to private persons/institutions

Databases are divided in following groups:

- Reference databases; a collection of bibliographic references in a database

- Full text databases; a collection of original texts

- Other databases are for example surveys/catalogues, dictionaries, e.t.c.

Based on international standard ISO 2789 (Information and documentation - International library statistics)

Name: Academic and special libraries

Topic: Culture and recreation

Division for Education and Culture Statistics

The figures are given on national and county level.

Annual.

None.

The National Library is the owner of the data and compiles statistics of their own.

The purpose is to show statistics from activities executed during the year by the special and research libraries. The statistics intend to give useful information to central and local authorities and others that in some way or other are involved in the running or financing of a library. The library statistics has been published once a year since 1980 in co-operation with the National Office for Research and Special Libraries and The Norwegian Archive, Library and Museum Authority. From the publication year 2011 in co-operation with the National Library.

Users of the statistics are: Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Education and Research, the library sector, and individuals interested in various documents related to information, research, education and recreation.

No external users have access to the statistics and analyses before they are published and accessible simultaneously for all users on ssb.no at 8 am. Prior to this, a minimum of three months' advance notice is given in the Statistics Release Calendar. This is one of Statistics Norway’s key principles for ensuring that all users are treated equally.

The statistics cover special and research libraries in universities and state colleges, in public and private special libraries and the National Library. The National Library updates a list including all the libraries. The statistics include figures of collections, increase and decrease of books and periodicals, printed and electronic. In addition figures are given on expenditure and persons employed.

Sources are the libraries themselves. However, the statistics are prepared in order to make it available through professional library systems.

The survey intends to cover the whole library field.

Questionnaires are dispatched and collected by the National Library. They are also responsible for reminding and for updating of the population. A great part of the libraries deliver their data electronically, by filling in the questionnaires which they can find on an Internet website. Statistics Norway receives a prepared data file from the National Library based on collected data. This file forms the basis of the official statistics.

Logical addition and coherence is checked. Besides, a comparison with the questionnaires from previous year is made in order to uncover great deviations.

None.

Loans excludes renewals from 2012 and onwards.

Some libraries do not answer all questions. The reason might be that they do not have data to report, wrong interpretation of some questions, or respondents might also unconsciously have given erroneous data, influencing the statistics.

Although the response rate is nearly 100 per cent, dropouts would cause small errors comparing with years before.

Principles for revisions in Statistics Norway