HOME | ANIMALS | PLANTS | CONSERVATION | ZOOS | REFERENCE | NEWS | BOOKS | VIDEOS | JOURNALS | ABOUT | SEARCH
The Zoo & Wildlife Survey was completed by 73 participating organizations over a two-month period between June and August in 2008. Periodic announcements soliciting survey responses were sent to the AZA-LSIG listserv for AZA librarians and the "allwaza" listserv for WAZA members. An additional 200 surveys were sent via US postal service to all AZA-accredited North American zoo and wildlife conservation organizations and 150 surveys were sent to international zoos with more than 300 employees. While a majority of the responses came from North American zoos, we also received responses from Europe, Australasia, and Asia.
1. Basic Information: Each reporting institution was asked to provide the following information.
Name:
Job Title:
Organization name:
Organization URL:
Library name:
Library URL:
Email address:
For a complete list of respondents, click here.
2. Is your library open to the public?
Yes: 31.5% (23 of 73 responses)
No: 68.5% (50 of 73 responses)
Hours of operation range from the typical 9-5, Monday through Friday to "someone just has to be here to unlock the door". Very few libraries had established weekend hours.
3. Do you have any outside funding from grants, donations, or other sources?
Yes: 31.5% (23 of 73 responses)
No: 68.5% (50 of 73 responses)
Explanations: All libraries that acknowledged outside funding indicated that donations of money and books were accepted.
Additional funding sources:
4. Please list any “special” collections, aside from books and serials (e.g. studbooks, archives, zoo publications, etc.):
Number of libraries with studbook collections:
15
Number of libraries with video/DVD collections: 11
Number of libraries with archives: 18
Number of libraries with rare book collections: 4
Number of libraries with photograph collections: 9
Number of libraries with art collections: 2
Number of libraries with guidebook collections: 3
Number of libraries with annual report collections: 7
Number of libraries with zoo magazines & newsletter collections: 13
Number of libraries with animal inventory collections: 3
Number of libraries with staff article collections: 2
Number of libraries with husbandry manual collections: 5
Number of libraries with slide collections: 4
Number of libraries with fact sheet collections: 2
5. What are your subject strengths? Check all that apply.
Mammals:
77.1% (54 of 70 responses)
Birds:
78.6%
(55 of 70 responses)
Reptiles: 67.17% (47 of 70 responses)
Amphibians: 60.0% (42 of 70 responses)
Veterinary Medicine: 45.7%
(32 of 70 responses)
Horticulture: 27.1% (19 of 70 responses)
Zoos: 45.7% (32 of 70 responses)
Conservation: 58.6%
(41 of 70 responses)
Additional subject strengths:
6. Number of professional librarians:
Number of libraries with at least one professional, full-time (MLIS) librarian: 16
Number of libraries with more than one: 3 (Zoological Society of London has 2, Harvard University has 4, Zoological Society of San Diego has 2)
Number of libraries with one half-time librarian: 10 (none have more than one)
7. Number of support staff:
Number of libraries with full-time support staff: 9 (Harvard University has 5 support staff, all others have 1)
Number of libraries with part-time support staff: 13 (Walt Disney World Animal Programs Library has 3 but has no other staff, all others have 1)
8. Do you offer library internships?
17.9% of responding libraries offer library internships (12 of 67 responses).
82.1% do not.
9. Number of interns:
Number of libraries with paid interns: 1 (2 interns)
Number of libraries with one unpaid intern: 10 (no libraries have more than one)
10. Approximate number of internship hours per week: Results varied widely.
11. Number of volunteers: Number of libraries with volunteers: 28 (21 have more than one, with a range of 2-16)
12. Approximate number of volunteer hours per week: Results varied widely.
13. Who does the librarian report to within your organization? This visual representation was created by TagCrowd.com, and illustrates the wide variety of job titles listed. For a full list of job titles, click here.
14. Approximate number of books in library collection
15. Library catalog software
Other software used:
16. Is your catalog available online?
Yes: 15.9% (11 of 69 responses)
No: 84.1% (58 of 69 responses)
Online catalog URLs:
Harvard University
John G. Shedd Aquarium
Lemur Conservation Foundation
Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium
Saint Louis Zoo
Smithsonian Institution
Zoological Society of London
Zoological Society of San Diego
17.
Amount of annual book budget (in US dollars):
18. Do you use OCLC for cataloging?
Yes: 16.2% (11 of 68 responses)
No: 83.8% (57 of 68 responses)
OCLC symbols:
ZOS: Zoological Society of San Diego
UVZ: Wildlife Conservation Society
HMZ: Harvard University
SMI: Smithsonian Institution
AV@: Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium
IHW: John G. Shedd Aquarium
ZOC: Cleveland Metroparks Zoo
19. Approximate number of active print journal subscriptions
Of the two libraries with more than 200 print journal subscriptions, one has 500 and one has 1,000.
20. Approximate number of active online journal subscriptions
Of the two libraries with more than 200 print journal subscriptions, one has 200 and one has 5,000.
21. Approximate total number of journal titles:
Of the three libraries with more than 500 total journal titles, one has 700 and one has 6,000.
22. Journal catalog software:
Other software used:
23. Main journal vendor:
Of 37 responding libraries, 12 use EBSCO as their main journal vendor. Other journal vendors used include SWETS and TXCOX, while several libraries indicate that they rely on donations.
24. Amount of annual serial budget (in US dollars):
25. Where are your journal titles listed?
Of 28 responding libraries, 4 (14.3%) list their journal titles in OCLC. 25 (89.3%) list titles only in internal catalogs.
26. Full-text databases used
JSTOR-A: Biological Sciences Collection JSTOR-B: Ecology & Botany Collection JSTOR-C: Life Sciences Collection
26. Which of the following full-text journal services do you use? Check all that apply.
EBSCONet:
22.7% (5 of 22 responses)
Academic Search Premier:
9.1%
(2 of 22 responses)
JSTOR's Biological Sciences: 22.7% (5 of 22 responses)
JSTOR's Life Sciences: 9.1% (2 of 22 responses)
JSTOR's Ecology & Botany: 9.1%
(2 of 22 responses)
BioOne 1: 36.4% (8 of 22 responses)
BioOne 2: 18.2% (4 of 22 responses)
WildPro: 13.6%
(3 of 22 responses)
Other full-text journal services:
27. Approximate number of employees served:
1-199: 32
200-499: 19
500+: 4
28. Bibliographic databases used
CAB-R: CAB Reviews CAB-A: CAB Abstracts CAB-AS: CAB Animal Science Database
28. Which of the following bibliographic databases do you use? Check all that apply.
Biosis:
20.0% (6 of 30 responses)
NISC/Biblioline:
16.7%
(5 of 30 responses)
OCLC: 33.3% (10 of 30 responses)
CAB Reviews: 6.7% (2 of 30 responses)
CAB Abstracts: 16.7%
(5 of 30 responses)
CAB Animal Science DB: 13.3% (4 of 30 responses)
Zoological Record: 36.7% (11 of 30 responses)
Other: 53.3%
(16 of 30 responses)
Other bibliographic databases:
29. Does your library maintain any databases (e.g. staff articles, zoo/animal reprints, archives, etc.)?
Yes: 35% (21 of 60 responses)
No: 65% (39 of 60 responses)
Libraries with archival databases: 8
Zoo/animal reprint databases: 4
Bibliographic staff article databases: 5
Arts/images databases: 2
Other databases:
30. Which of the following special services do you offer?
Inter-Library Loan:
63.6% (21 of 33 responses)
Newsletter:
18.2%
(6 of 33 responses)
News Alerts: 24.2% (8 of 33 responses)
Other: 30.3% (10 of 33 responses)
Other special services include:
31. Approximate number of ILL transactions per year:
Of 43 responding libraries, 18 processed under 500 ILL transactions per year. Two libraries had 500 ILL transactions, one had 625, one had 1,514, and one had 2,000.
31. Approximate number of ILL transactions per year
32. Do you have any digitization projects in progress or planned?
Yes: 31.6% (18 of 57 responses)
No: 68.4% (39 of 57 responses)
Zoo Leipzig GmbH: animal books
Knoxville Zoo:
Want to digitize the entire collection
Zoological Society of London:
Catalogue cards for books 1860-1990
Omaha Henry Doorly Zoo: Planning to digitize slide archives and to categorize our digital images.
Zoo New England:
would like to learn more on this
Royal Zoological Society of South Australia Inc.: Planned: Collection of historical photographs, and collection of annual reports.
John G. Shedd Aquarium: Digitization of Shedd-produced images (1920s-1970s)
Bermuda Aquarium, Museum & Zoo: digitization of bermuda specific scientific papers
Cleveland Metroparks Zoo: digitizing historical photos
Omaha Henry Doorly Zoo: Plan to begin transferring slide images to microfiche beginning in 2008.
Denver Zoological Foundation: digitizing our slide collection
Lemur Conservation Foundation: old out of print texts related to lemur studies
Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium: Institutional Repository using DSpace, https://dspace.mote.org:8443/dspace/
DALLAS ZOO: CATALOG GOING ONLINE IN NEAR FUTURE
Philadelphia Zoo: Necropsy records, archives, animal transaction documents - being digitized and indexed in Fortis by volunteers
Milwaukee County Zoo / Zoological Society of Milwaukee: Digitization of historical images for Archives photo database (in progress); conversion of 25 cans of 16mm film to DVD (planned, funding dependent).
Zoological Society of San Diego: Staff article repository
Saint Louis Zoo: We have a digital image catalog and have digitized much of our slide collection
International Crane Foundation: digitizing slides
digitizing proceedings
digitizing Whooping Crane reintroduction field notes
33. Listserv memberships:
12 of 30 responding libraries are subscribers of AZA-LSIG.
Other responses include (by institution):
34. Consortia memberships: Responses include (by institution):
35. Thank you for taking the time to complete this survey! If you have any questions or comments, please enter them here:
HOME | ANIMALS | PLANTS | CONSERVATION | ZOOS | REFERENCE | NEWS | BOOKS | VIDEOS | JOURNALS | ABOUT | SEARCH
