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Survey Results

Open Access Resources · 11
Executive Summary
Background
Faced with ever-increasing journal subscription
costs and declining library collections budgets,
libraries are expanding their collections by mak-
ing open access (OA) research literature available
through their catalogs, Web sites, open URL resolv-
ers, and other resources. While not free to produce,
as defined by the Budapest Open Access Initiative
(BOAI) this literature is made freely accessible to
users by removing price and permission barriers.
The purpose of this survey was to gather infor-
mation on whether and how ARL member librar-
ies are selecting, providing access to, cataloging,
hosting, tracking usage of, and promoting the use
of open access research literature for their patrons
by using established library resources such as the
OPAC and link resolvers. It was hoped the survey
results would provide valuable information for
those libraries interested in incorporating OA con-
tent into their collections.
The survey was sent to the 123 ARL member li-
braries in March 2007. Seventy-one responses were
received by the deadline, a return rate of 58%. All
but one of the survey respondents provide access
to OA resources. These 70 libraries represent 57%
of the ARL membership. The results indicate that
although many of the ARL member libraries have
embraced a wide range of OA literature and have
fully integrated it into their selection, acquisition,
cataloging, and promotion processes, others have
been less active in this area.
Linking and Hosting
The survey asked to which kinds of open access re-
sources the library provides links for users. Sixty-
nine respondents (97%) provide links to journals,
the category most commonly associated with the
open access movement. Sixty-two (87%) provide
links to government documents, literature that is
typically available without charge. A majority pro-
vides access to monographs or theses/dissertations
(80%), followed by conference papers/proceedings
or technical reports (62%). A little more than a third
provide access to legal documents. While the BOAI
definition of open access literature primarily en-
compasses journal articles, respondents to this sur-
vey apparently use a broader definition. Forty-one
percent link to OA resources that include digitized
photos, maps, and other images, video and audio
files, statistical and geospatial data, and other re-
sources that are not scholarly writing. This is not
unexpected, as these all belong to the broader class
of freely available electronic resources. Fifty-two of
the responding libraries (74%) host OA resources
on their own servers.
Libraries are using multiple channels to pro-
vide links to OA resources. Survey respondents
commonly provide access to locally hosted OA re-
sources of all types through OPAC records (82%),
Web pages (70%), and institutional repositories
(56%). For journal articles, they also use open URL
resolvers, a third-party title list or portal such as
Serials Solutions or EBSCO, and electronic resource