Academic
A review in 1960 of library growth figures for the 25 university libraries listing holdings of over 1 million volumes in order to check Fremont Rider's finding that American college and university libraries tended to double their holdings every 15 years, showed that, only 4 had increased their holdings by 100% or more during the previous 15 year period. The overall average growth rate for the 25 was 78%. (Source)
A comparison of 25 university libraries listing holdings of over 1 million volumes in 1960 with the 22 top-ranked graduate institutions, showed that, only 5 of the university libraries were not ranked as one of the top 22 graduate institutions. These 5 were Texas, Brown, Iowa State, Duke and Missouri. Only 2 of the top 22 institutions had libraries whose holdings were less than 1 million. These were MIT and Cal Tech. (Source)
A 1963 update of the growth rates of the 20 libraries originally studied by Rider, showed that, collection growth rates have clearly decreased. His first group of "10 large university libraries of respectable age" had a collection doubling time of 16 years based on the average growth rate for the period 1831-1938. However, based on their average growth rate for the period 1938-60, their average doubling time was 25.1 years. (Source)
A 1963 restudy using partially new data of the growth rates of those U.S. university libraries whose collections exceeded 1 million on June 30, 1960 (original study by Axford, Source), showed that, the average time it took library collections to double in size, given their average growth rate of 3.5% during the period 1946-60, was 20.1 years. However, there was great variability among the libraries, with the doubling time required ranging from 9.8 years to 43.3 years. (Source)
Ibid...showed that, in the 14 years previous to 1946-60 (1932-46) the average time it took library collections to double in size, given their average growth rate of 3.4% during this period, was 20.7 years. Here, too, there was great individual variability, with the doubling time ranging from 9.3 years to 33.3 years. (Source)
Ibid...showed that, Rider's second group of 10 more recently funded university libraries had a collection doubling time of 9.5 years (according to the author of the article's recalculation, it was actually 10.9 years) based on their average growth rate for the period 1938-60. However, based on their average growth rate for the period 1938-60, their average doubling time was 22 years. (Source)
Ibid...showed that, there was no statistically significant relationship between library growth rate and university excellence. Specifically, if library growth rate rank order as compared with the "correct" Keniston-Berelson rank order of university excellence in their graduate teaching and research programs, the correlation between the two during the 14 year period 1946-60 was r = -.24. This was not a statistically significant finding. (Source)
Ibid...showed that, if the Keniston-Berelson rank order of university excellence in graduate teaching and research programs was used to create a top group of 10 universities and a second-level group of 10 universities while the remaining members of the Association of Graduate Schools made up the third level of universities, the mean collection size of the first group had over twice as many volumes as the mean of the second group in 1946 and1960. The same ratio and relationship held for the means of absolute volumes added. (Source)
Special
A 1976 survey of head law librarians in North American schools (sample size: 178; responding: 154 or 86.7%) showed that the modal numbers of volumes acquired per year by size of library were as follows:
small (50,000 volumes or less) 0-5,000 vol./year
medium (50,001 - 100,000) 0-5,000 vol./year
med/large (101,000 - 200,000) 5,001 - 10,000 vol./year
large (over 200,000) 10,000 - 15,000 vol./year (Source)
