Electronic Resource Expenditure and the Decline in Reference Transaction Statistics in Academic Libraries

The current study investigates factors influencing increase in reference transactions in a typical week in academic libraries across the United States of America. Employing multiple regression analysis and general linear modeling, variables of interest from the Academic Library Survey (ALS) 2006 survey (sample size 3960 academic libraries) were analyzed. Findings indicated that spending more on electronic resource in academic libraries leads to an increase rather than a decrease in numbers of reference transactions in a typical week recorded. Additionally, the effect of having low, medium or high gate counts is different for high, medium and low spenders on electronic resources within academic library groups surveyed on the outcome variable.