Results: Academic Librarian Journal Readership Survey

Steven Bell has posted the results of his Academic Librarian Journal Readership Survey at ACRLog. Most of the respondents seem to be ACRL members and read 1-2 articles from their personal copies of magazines, on paper, within one month of receiving it. Steven’s conclusion from the one open-ended question are that

* the articles in these journals provide strong evidence that tenure for librarians leads to a glut of unnecessary or pointless scholarly articles (our discipline isn’t the only one)
* the respondents depend on their rss feeds and blogs for news and readable content - not these journals
* librarians open the journals quickly to see who published and to look at job ads - and it’s downhill after that
* despite all of the above it’s still important to read these journals

How different is this kind of journal reading from two or three decades ago, I wonder? My impression is that there was never a golden time when librarians – or academics in general – had all the time in the world.

I tend to at least look at everything, because I’m new in the field and I want to know more. I’m sure my reading habits will change in time.