Academic and special libraries, 2008

Digital collections have increased by over 50 per cent in the past year. The digital documents are mainly collected in the National Library, and this library digitised almost 500 million documents in 2008. The increase in digital documents in libraries at universities and colleges and other higher education establishments is less, with about half a million, but nevertheless represents an increase of 68 per cent for these libraries.

Collections and loans

Books and publication series represent 62 per cent of the almost 33 million physical units in the special and research libraries. Other physical units are manuscripts, microfiches, written music, audio visual documents and other material.

Special and research libraries made over 4.2 million loans to the public in 2008, of which 87 per cent were local loans. Libraries at universities and specialised university colleges have the largest share of loans, with almost1.8 million or slightly less than half of the total. Libraries at colleges and other schools of higher education represent 38 per cent or 1.6 million loans, of which 92 per cent were local.

Most librarian man-years

In 2008, 1 566 man-years were carried out at the 327 library units covered by these statistics. A total of 73 per cent of the man-years were performed by librarians. The libraries’ total expenditure amounted to about NOK 1.45 billion.

Tables:

• Table 1 Special and research libraries. 2008
• Table 2 Special and research libraries. Books, periodicals, issues, loans, expenditure, persons employed and man-years. 2008