Catalina Espinosa
Research expert covering society, economy, and politics for Europe and the EU
Electronic resources at academic libraries in the United States - Statistics & Facts
Nowadays, electronic resources are an integral part of academic libraries’ collections. As of 2016, on average, about 9.3 percent of all academic library acquisition budgets were spent on e-books. In 2021, the e-book share of academic library acquisition budgets in the United States was forecasted to increase by almost 50 percent. As stated by 38 percent of academic libraries, the main reason for rising e-book budgets was the general shift from print to electronic resources. Globally there was a trend of gradually increasing academic library budgets for e-books. As of 2016, academic libraries spent an average of 25.9 percent of their total book budgets on electronic books worldwide .
