Current COFHE data, 2021

Staffing

Library staff over time

Collections

If we look at the size of the overall collection (including all physical and electronic items), we can see that Middlebury is near the bottom of the COHFE pack, and slightly increasing collection size, year-to-year, as is typical across the cohort.

However, we should normalize all of the collections by student FTE. So we’ll use the “Total Enrollment” variable (which includes both grad and undergrad enrollment). We see Middlebury is still near the bottom.

Collections Budgets

Boxplots of one-time purchases per school, adjusted for inflation.

Ongoing subscription commitments per school over time, adjusted to 2021 dollars.

Total budgets

Total budgets over time, adjusted for inflation.

Total Library budget by UG enrollment and total FTE, adjusted for inflation.

Sources

This document includes data from Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) as well as data collected by member libraries for various Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) surveys covering the period of 2009 - 2021.

NOTE

  • Data go only to 2021.
  • For student enrollments, we use the “Total 12-month unduplicated headcount” from the Integrated Postsecondary Ecucation Data System (IPEDS) for both graduate and undergraduate enrollments. This variable was selected after consultation with Adela Langrock, Director of Assessment and Institutional Research.
  • Data have been manually corrected for some faults – i.e. for several years, budget data, as entered, was off by a factor of 10 when compared to other data from the same institution.
  • For Middlebury, we have included enrollments (for both undergraduate and graduate students) for the Language Schools and BLSE. We have not included MIIS data. These data are particularly difficult for finding accurate and consistent sources.
  • Data from Barnard College, because of their historically tight integration with Columbia University Libraries, are especially incomplete.