Open Password – Wednesday March 9, 2022
#1039
Outsell – Global Library Information Market – Kate Worlock – Trends Driving Change – Forecasts – Information Industry Database (Outsell) – Information Management Benchmark (Outsell) – Publicly Available Data – Corporate Libraries – Academic Libraries – School Libraries – Public Libraries – Government Libraries – Healthcare -related Libraries – Rising Prices – Pandemic-related Challenges – Senior Staff Retiring – Expertise Gaps – Training and Development – Digital Dominates – Print – Remote Learning – Information for Vaccines – Open Access – Disintermediation of Research – Changes of IP and Copyright Laws – Mobile Devices – AI – Machine Learning – Digitization Journeys – Information Management Function – Pharmaceutical Industry – Market Size and Forecast – Global Library Market – Emergency Funding – Price Freezes – Global Spending by Library Type – Global Content Spending by Library Type – Yearly Growth in Content Spending by Library Type – Long-term Relationships
Ukraine – Science for Ukraine – Support for Students and Researchers – Citizens and Law – Allensbach – Legal Tech – Sven Gelbke – Justice System – Diplomatic Council – Robots in Everyday Life – Digital Ethics – Andreas Dripke – Vacuum Robots – Robot Dogs – Humanoids – Astro – Amazon – Tesla Bot – Elon Musk – Boston Dynamics – Spot – Police and security companies – French Army – United Nations – Killer robots – Leasing and subscription models
- Science for Ukraine
- Title: Global Library Information Market:
Forecast and Trends – By Kate Worlock
III. Citizens and the law:
Young people mostly like legal tech – dissatisfied with the justice system
- Diplomatic Council
Robots are conquering everyday life and must become the subject of digital ethics
#Science for Ukraine is a voluntary initiative whose mission is to support students and researchers from Ukraine.
Outsell’s March Contribution*
Global Library Information Market:
Forecast and Trends
Part I
By Kate Worlock – VP & Lead Analyst
Kate Worlock
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Why This Segment
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This report sizes and segments the content spending of the $31.6 billion global library market and analyzes the trends driving change. It forecasts spending through 2022 and acts as a tool for information providers who target the library market and must understand its regional and vertical dynamics.
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Market Definition and Methodology
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Outsell scans available data on libraries worldwide and indicators of how much they
spend on information. We then evaluate that data to build our market models and use estimates to fill in any gaps.
Outsell bases the estimates of change in each market segment on an analysis of library spending patterns from Outsell’s Information Industry Database, data from our annual Information Management Benchmark (IMB) studies that capture spending data from libraries, and input from Outsell analysts who report on the library sector. This benchmark and spending data spans nearly 20 years of research.
The current update incorporates data from the benchmark survey completed in November 2021, which included questions on current and future spending by libraries across content types. A total of 62 information managers responded to the survey.
Outsell also collates publicly available data on the library market from a wide range of third parties, including the following organizations:
- American Library Association (ALA)• American Library Directory (published by Information Today, Inc.)• Australian Bureau of Statistics• CILIP (UK)• Council of Australian University Librarians• Council of Ministers of Education Canada• Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences ( published by Taylor &Francis)• European Parliament• German Library Statistics• Instituto Nacional de Estadística (Spain)• International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA)• Libraries Canada (published by Gray House Publishing Canada)• National Bureau of Statistics of China• National Center for Education Statistics (US)• National Mission of Libraries (India)• Rossiskaya Natsionalnaya Biblioteka (Russia)• UNESCO Institute for Statistics• UniRank• World Guide to Libraries (published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH)
Outsell’s analysis considers the following types of libraries:
- Corporate Libraries : These libraries exclusively serve their parent organizations
and cover a wide range of industry verticals, including pharmaceuticals, automotive and aerospace, finance and insurance, chemicals, food and beverages, and legal.• Academic Libraries : The third-largest segment in terms of the number of
individual locations, academic libraries include those at all higher education institutions, such as colleges, universities, community colleges, trade schools, and professional schools.• School Libraries : Libraries in elementary and secondary (K-12) educational
institutions. These are by far the most numerous – there are over a million school libraries worldwide.
• Public Libraries : Second to school libraries in number, public libraries —
including national libraries — exist in some form in almost every country. Public libraries fulfill the widest array of missions and support the greatest diversity of users of any library type. Outsell’s figures for public libraries represent library systems or main libraries, not individual branch libraries, since these libraries’ budgets are governed at the system level.• Government Libraries : This sector includes governments at all levels and
serves both end-users within government roles and members of the public.• Other Special Libraries : For this report, we have focused primarily on
healthcare-related libraries, including those in hospitals, research institutes, andmedical practices, unless otherwise indicated. This includes nonprofits such as cultural organizations, associations, and religious organizations.
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Market Drivers and Inhibitors
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End-user shifts, technological developments, and funding pressures continue to impact libraries in all segments, with different factors at play in individual segments. Outsell analysis points to the following segment dynamics.
Budget Challenges Have Eased, But Likely Temporarily.
Respondents to Outsell’s 2021 IMB survey expected that their budgets would rise by3.1% in 2022. This suggests that while budgets are tight, there are signs of future growth. These budget increases will not only help information managers develop their digital collections and services but also mean that information providers might be able to raise prices slightly. This is an important growth driver for vendors, particularly since many organizations held prices flat in 2020 as a nod to the pandemic-related challenges buyers faced.
However, there is a danger that this budget growth picture is temporary. Emergency government funding for public, academic, and K-12 libraries was intended to enable these facilities to support patrons remotely during the pandemic. While this remote support will continue, this funding, by virtue of its emergency nature, will not be available for the long term.
Danger of Skills Shortages
Outsell’s IMB survey found that library spending on content rose as a proportion of total spend, with spending on personnel (both FTEs and outsourced personnel) taking the brunt of this change. Budget allocated to personnel fell from 37% in 2018 to 34% in 2020 and to 29% in 2021. Anecdotally, this has taken place through senior staff retiring and not being replaced, suggesting a decline in sector expertise. Remaining library staff are likely to require support from providers to fill these expertise gaps.
This decline in sector expertise is reflected in the finding that 35% of IMB respondents in 2021 saw a need for additional funding for training and development. Modernizing library technology systems and software tools drives the need for training to boost the skills of IM staff members to manage these new systems and tools.
Digital Dominates.
Most library spending goes to digital resources, according to the IMB survey, with print accounting for around 10%. Spending on bundled resources is minimal, which is
understandable given the challenges with facilitating user access to a combined analogue/digital resource.
Outsell does not expect this picture to change in 2022, suggesting that the market has achieved a print plateau of around 10%. This ensures that the library can serve in-person needs where necessary but that the bulk of its spending is focused on ensuring the supply of digital resources to both in-person and remote users.
In terms of format popularity, spending on online databases of text-based content from single providers took up 40% of this year’s budget, on average, with librarians supplementing gaps by investing in the category of individual articles and document delivery, one of the areas to see a jump in forecast spending. This trend suggests that libraries are having to reorient their budgets in this direction to make up for any gaps in database content in combination with a shortage of personnel expertise to help users find exactly what they’re looking for. Ensuring that business models align with this expected change will mean that vendors can take advantage of this upcoming shift.
Understandable Short-Term Focus
Libraries have always looked to align with the interests, needs, characteristics, and
pressures of the home institution. In academic libraries, this means supportingdiscoverability for researchers and an increasing focus on the digital needs of students.This is particularly the case in the US, where falling student enrollment is driving institutions to look for a range of ways to attract and retain students. When it comes to online learning, the library is involved not just in the provision of resources but in making remote learning a rich and fulfilling experience. Meanwhile, public libraries are concerned with the digital divide and providing access to critical information on topics such as vaccines.
This short-term focus is also reflected in the trends that librarians felt would most strongly impact the IM function. Open access, the disintermediation of research, and changes to IP and copyright laws were of greatest concern, while respondents were less worried about the impact of social media, pirate sites, and the growth in non-traditional or alt-data products. This shows a change from 2020, when respondentswere most concerned about the growth in data products: this came in fourth place this year, alongside increased amounts of video content, demographic changes, and growth in demand for virtual work practices.
As with the question about technology, this suggests that information managers remain largely concerned with traditional issues, with many not looking beyond these traditional borders to see how their roles might change. The concerns of the day job appear to still take precedence over future-gazing, even though 55% of respondents indicated that they have reorganized their functions to accommodate new institutional requirements and the need for new roles and skills.
High technology expectations.
Information management leaders are well versed in new technologies, although there is a continuous need to keep ahead of the game. For example, they must examinetechnologies such as blockchain that present numerous possibilities related to digital information management and intellectual property protection.
Outsell’s IMB survey asked respondents to rank a set of technologies in terms of the impact they were likely to have on information services. While the data is directional here, it does reflect a similar pattern to 2020: most respondents did not feel that blockchain technologies would have a significant impact, while just 27% felt that their services would be impacted by virtual and augmented reality. The technology most expected to have an impact was mobile devices, followed by AI and machine learning. Again, this shows little change from 2020.
We also asked respondents about their digital progress. On average, respondents reported that they were 75% of the way along their digitization journeys. These results are disappointing: they suggest that the information management function is lagging the institutions and enterprises it serves. This is also surprising given the large group of respondents from the pharmaceutical industry — which is making massive strides in the use of technologies to develop new drugs — and the critical nature of the IM function in supporting the research that drives these developments.
Vendors clearly have some work ahead to support information managers as they try to balance the conflicting demands of budget — particularly, spending on personnel — against investments in technology. There are already solutions in the market using AI very effectively to serve this community. To ensure that IM professionals have a clear idea of technology’s benefits and limitations, the vendors of these solutions must raise their voices to increase the profiles of their offerings.
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Market Size and Forecast
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In 2021, libraries spent $31.6 billion on content worldwide. Outsell forecasts that the market will grow by 3.1% this year, reaching $32.4 billion. Table 1 shows Outsell’s estimates for global library spending.
Table 1: Global Library Market, 2017-22
Sources: Outsell Information Management Benchmark Survey, Outsell market sizing data, World Bank
While library budgets remain under pressure, the impact of the pandemic was not disastrous. Just over a third of respondents to Outsell’s November 2021 InformationManagement Benchmarking (IMB) survey claimed that they had seen no budgetary impact, and there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that some libraries were able to access emergency funding to support the development of their digital archives and resources to facilitate remote access for patrons when physical libraries were closed.Thus, while budgets remain an area of critical concern, they are at least not on the decline. However, given that vendor prices are likely to rise — particularly since many vendors implemented price freezes during the pandemic to show support for their customers — this merely means that IM’s spending power is flat, not up.
Figure 1: Global Content Spending by Library Type, 2021-2022 ($billions)
Source: Outsell, Inc.
Overall, Outsell forecasts a CAGR of 1.8% in content spending across all library types and geographic regions for the period from 2017 to 2022. Spending in all segments shows growth in the low-single-figure range, and close to flat for public, K -12, and government libraries. However, this five-year CAGR of 1.8% is higher than the 1.5% for 2013-17, likely highlighting the impact of emergency funding allocated to libraries in 2020-21 to help them further develop their digital resources to serve patrons remotely during the pandemic .
Figure 2 shows the growth in content spending by different types of libraries over the 2017-22 period. School libraries are the largest segment, accounting for approximately 37% of the library market but with relatively low spending per library. Academic, public, and corporate libraries each comprise 15-20% of the market, with academic libraries at the top of that range. Government libraries account for just 4% of library content spending.
Figure 2: Global Content Spending CGR by Library Type, 2017 – 22
Source: Outsell, Inc.
The overall picture shown in Figure 2 is driven by annual activity that differs significantly from year to year, shown in Table 2, largely because of the pandemic. All library types saw budget growth in 2021 compared to 2020, often due to government-sourced recovery funding. School library budgets generally track GDP but saw a pandemic-driven funding boost while, conversely, growth in corporate library budgets is generally above GDP but fell in 2020 due to the economic slowdown. The outlier within this subgroup was libraries serving pharmaceutical companies involved in vaccine development, where investment in content resources was critical.
Table 2: Yearly Growth in Content Spending by Library Type, 2018-22
Source: Outsell, Inc.
See also Part II: Further Forecasts – Essential Actions for Information Management Professionals and Vendors
Citizens and law
of young people like Legal Tech
and are dissatisfied with the justice system
(Allensbach) A current and representative study by the Allensbach Institute shows that young people in Germany want to handle their legal matters themselves on the Internet without legal advice. Of the 16 to 29 year olds, 56 percent think it’s generally good if they can solve legal problems on the computer with the help of legal tech offerings instead of with a lawyer, and of the 30 to 44 year olds even 59 percent.
“The results of the survey confirm our daily experience as a legal tech company,” says Dr. Sven Gelbke, who helps overlooked heirs to receive their compulsory portion via the website www.dieerbschutzer.de . “We work purely on a success basis. We receive 14 percent of the amount we collect for passed-over heirs. “This is fair, easy to calculate and risk-free for our customers,” says Gelbke.
What the Allensbach study also revealed: Citizens are very dissatisfied with the justice system. 81 percent criticize that many proceedings in Germany take too long – 75 percent even consider the courts to be overloaded. “What is even more serious is the fact that, according to the Allensbach study, a large part of the population has doubts about equal treatment in court. “59 percent are of the opinion that you can increase your chances of a favorable verdict with a well-known lawyer,” reports Gelbke, who also wants to use his Legal Tech offering to help ensure that getting justice is not a question of money.
Diplomatic Council
Robots are conquering everyday life and must
become the subject of digital ethics
“Robots in everyday life – machines (almost) like people”, Andreas Dripke, 176 pages, ISBN 978-3-947818-71-6
In the future, robots will become as commonplace in our everyday lives as we use our smartphones today. This is the thesis of the new book “Robots in everyday life – machines (almost) like people”, which was published by the UN think tank Diplomatic Council (ISBN 978-3-947818-71-6). The author Andreas Dripke says: “Hardly anyone can imagine life without a smartphone today – it will be the same with robots in the future.”
The book covers a wide range from vacuum robots, which already ensure cleanliness in many households, to robot dogs, such as those used to inspect buildings in the recent major fire in Essen, to humanoids, i.e. robots that are modeled on humans. The forecast: From 2026 onwards, household robots will gradually find their way into the smart home. The first forerunner is the home robot Astro from Amazon, which looks like a vacuum robot with a mounted screen and an extendable telescopic camera. The Home Robot, which is currently only available in the USA, is aimed at the consumer market with a price of 1,500 dollars. The advance announcement of the Tesla Bot by Elon Musk is seen as a further indicator of the emerging home robot market. The book also expresses the expectation that Samsung, Xiaomi and ultimately Apple will enter the everyday robot market in a few years.
In the author’s opinion, the latest Atlas model from Boston Dynamics best illustrates how advanced the development of humanoids has already become. The book says:
“ The humanoid robot performs jumps, curves and stairs as well as somersaults. If he occasionally stumbles, he catches himself and keeps running – just as a human would normally behave. The movements seem flowing, flexible and fast, almost like a ballet dancer. Anyone who saw Atlas 2021 on the course could see how close we are to humanoids penetrating our everyday lives.”
The author predicts that the robot dog Spot, also developed by Boston Dynamics, will be more widespread in the short term. Police and security companies are increasingly using the mechanical four-legged friend as a remote-controlled guard dog or as an advance guard when the security situation is unclear. However, test missions of the robot dog with the French army also revealed the “dark side” of the new robotic technology. The United Nations’ efforts – so far in vain – to ban autonomous weapons, i.e. “killer robots”, will also be discussed.
Dripke calls for the development of digital ethics in order to prevent excesses and borderline situations in AI-controlled machines or to make them manageable. The book recalls the “robot laws” of the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov:
“ First, a robot must not harm a human being or allow harm to come to a human being through inaction. Second, a robot must obey commands given to it by a human – unless such a command would conflict with rule one. Third: A robot must protect its existence as long as this protection does not conflict with rule one or two.”
However, it will probably be a few years before robots dominate our everyday lives to the same extent that smartphones do today. The book talks about a time horizon beyond 2030. Sophisticated humanoids should then be available for around $20,000, predicts Dripke. He estimates that leasing or subscription models in particular will pave the way for the widespread use of artificial household helpers.
The urgency of digital ethics becomes particularly clear in the case of autonomous vehicles:
“ If the car realizes that it can no longer avoid a sudden obstacle in the middle of the street, should it swerve to the left into the crowd of five people or to the right into a family of four? Or race into the obstacle and thus “only” sacrifice, say, two passengers? Based on the current factual and legal situation, the car manufacturer would determine how its software that controls the car deals with this dilemma. Do we want that?”
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