Pharmaceutical Library Services: Staffing, Resources and Activities Critical to Corporate Libraries

Best Practices, LLC conducted this research to help library and information center leaders compare scope, volume, cost, and delivery of library services at their companies with those at other organizations within the bio-pharmaceutical industry.

The key topics include:

• Use of library staff, vendors and others in providing services
• Financial resources
• Cost recovery practices
• Distribution of FTE hours by service category
• Penetration of potential user base
• Forces of change

Study Snapshot

Twenty-one companies participated in this study, with 16 representing the pharmaceutical/ biotech industries and five representing the medical device/ diagnostic industries.

Sample Key Findings

People Allocation: Participating Pharma Segment companies allocate about 40% of FTE hours to reference and research services, while Device Segment libraries use about 30% of staff hours for reference and research services. Another large category, electronic resource management, used 23% of Pharma and 18% of Device hours.

• Outsourcing: Participating companies frequently use vendors to supplement staff in providing selected services, but they rarely outsource more than 25% of any library service. No service was 100% outsourced at any participating company. Services most often provided with vendor support include end user training, analysis of research results, maintenance of library catalogs, and current awareness bulletins.

• Key Findings
• Library Profile
• Library Services
• Financial Resources
• Human Resources
• Forces of Change