Abstract

This study uses Gini coefficient to index the inequality of academic information resource among universities to identify the areas where the gap is extremely severe, and analyzes the Gini coefficient over time for 10 years to show how the gap is changing. In addition, the degree and characteristics of the gap appearing by type of universities such as metropolitan universities, local national universities, private universities, and colleges were also compared. As a result, first, the university library academic information infrastructure showed a severe level of disparity (0.6 - 0.9), and the inequality was more severe in serials, electronic resources, and reference service. Even when the relative Gini coefficient was calculated considering the number of students, the inequality was over 0.4 in serial etc. Second, the Gini coefficient trend over the last decade shows that the inequality has decreased toward equality in the re-education time of employees and electronic information resources, but not in other sectors. Third, it was found that special universities and universities in the metropolitan area showed a large gap between universities of the same kind, and local national universities showed the best gap level as well as the best academic information infrastructure.