Academic Library Data Publications by US government Agencies

Introduction

This page provides links to an archive of information on U.S. academic libraries published by NCES and predecessor agencies. They have been gathered from a variety of sources and, again, not systematically. Maybe semi-systematically. I grabbed everything I saw but one would need time in a serious library to do a systematic collection.

It was (and is) my intent to recompile a longitudinal file of these data similar to what I have done with other datasets including the public library data PLDF3 and PUSUM. I have tried twice but this is a complicated task. My thinking is that while the public library universe does change and these changes are reflected in changes in what data are collected over time, the changes which occur with academics are so rapid that comparability between years is difficult to maintain. I found something similar when I tried to recompile the State Library Agencies (that is, state libraries) data. It is my belief that a longitudinal file of data on academic libraries would be of great use in analyzing the trends affecting these institutions. But, that project is…difficult.

Publications here come from (current) the Academic Libraries Survey (ALS) data and documentation from the US National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). In addition, the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) also had data from the earlier Higher Education General Information Survey (HEGIS) going back to the 1970s. A number of these publications are no longer available from NCES nor from the ICPSR as nearly as I can determine. Many people have contributed to collecting these fugitive documents. For instance, the 1990 ED Tabs was scanned and made available by Denise Davis when she was at the then ALA Office for Research and Statistics.Others are mentioned in the Archive's main page. Also, we owe the many librarians who worked on the surveys as well as employees at NCES—over many years—thanks for their work in creating doing the studies as well as providing me digital copies of the older publications.

According to the introduction to the documentation for the 2002 ALS data file (p. 1), the following are the dates of collection for the Academic Libraries Survey:

The Academic Libraries Survey (ALS) data have been collected by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) since 1966. Between 1966 and 1988, data on academic libraries were collected the following years: 1968-69, 1971-72, 1973-74, 1975-76, 1977-78, 1979-80, 1982-83, 1985-86 within the framework of the Higher Education General Information System (HEGIS). Beginning in 1988, the library survey was collected biennially in even-numbered years: 1988, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1996, and 1998 as part of the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). Beginning in 2000, the ALS data collection was conducted independently of IPEDS by the NCES library program.

This site has publications for academic libraries through the FY 2012 (the latest) ALS survey. The documentation for this survey does not have such a comprehensive history of the early collection of data from this library universe quoted above. The history above makes it clear that although there are publications here which are not available on the NCES site, there are many more missing and, hence, there is work to do.

What is available here is what I have collected from various sources. I have left space for those publications (including data files) which I have identified but that appear to be missing in the ALS years. The HEGIS data appear to have been made available for several years at a time so knowing which datasets are available will take further work. Of course, the data for the early years may, or may not, have been available electronically although ICPSR had an edition of the data as early as 1970-71. In any case, any missing data will be welcome.

ASCII files need a documented record layout to read. For the HEGIS data, there were four files from ICPSR: rl2120.excel.gz, rl2118.excel.gz, rl2116.excel.gz, rl2113.excel.gz. I unzipped each of them and they then had a .excel extension. I renamed each to .xls but was able to read only rl2113 and it is available here as rl2113.xls. This is a most interesting file as it seems to have record layouts for a number of years’ data. However, there are more years listed than appear in the documentation quoted above. They are: 1966-1986. Deciphering these files will take a bit more detective work as will finding the missing data and converting them to usable form. Any help is welcome. Until then, the filenames are as they were when I received them.

I have tried to keep filenames as NCES had them but the dates the data were collected are very different from when they are published and, too, there is inconsistency in NCES file naming. So, filenames have been altered in some cases for clarity but the tables below have the original file names for the files I have renamed here. For example, when work began on this project in 2007, the FY 1996 data were not available but the FY 1994 data were. At a later time, the 1996 data were available but the 1994 data are not. I infer that the 1996 data were reissued in 2008 because of the characteristic NCES file name: 2008318. The unsuspecting might think that this file had information on the 2008 data so the documentation has been renamed to ALS1996doc.pdf, however in the bibliographic tables below, the current file name is referenced. I regard these changes as instructive and a reminder why we should archive our data and not rely on the kindness of strangers, as the saying goes

NCES also varies its scheme for numbering its publications sometimes preferring dashes (2001-301) and sometimes not (200036). I have not found any ambiguity in these differences. NCES also seems to number publications sequentially by year. Here I have followed NCES practice as shown on the publications bibliographic table below. Before 1999, the years were named with two-digit years: (98-062) while in 1999 they added the two extra digits for the century (1999-330).

I like the arrangement that NCES has for its publications here and will likely do something similar. However, as of today, the code makes the W3C Validator unhappy. So that is on the to-do list

As mentioned, this collection began when I was at the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science. Eventually, all the files I collected were published by NCLIS on a set of CDs. Since then, other publications have been taken down and others I could not find at the time of the CD have reappeared. For example, I could not locate the 1994 ALS data at the time but they are available now. The 1996 data were available then but not now. I have included both here. I suspect that NCES might be reissuing the 1996 data at which time I will update this pages.

November 30, 2022
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