Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Introduction To Academic E-Books, Judith M. Nixon, Robert S. Freeman, Suzanne M. Ward

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

With so many advantages, it seems logical that librarians would be eager to switch from purchasing books in print to embrace the electronic format. However the transition to e-books in academic libraries has not been a smooth or quick one and the reasons are myriad and complicated. Aware that this is still a time of transition and that there are many issues surrounding the e-book, the editors set out to present the state of e-books in academic libraries today. They invited knowledgeable publishers and librarians to write about the current challenges, successes, and trends. In addition, there is a section …

Organisational Changes And A New Media Policy: Meeting User Demands At The Royal Institute Of Technology, Cecilia Heyman Widmark

Proceedings of the IATUL Conferences

This paper discusses why there is a need for organisational changes and a new policy for acquisitions within an academic library when 96.5 % of the media budget is spent on electronic resources related to the 3.5 % spent on print. At the Library of The Royal Institute of Technology the acquisitions and handling of printed material involved more time and personnel compared to that of licensing and administering electronic resources. Given the economic relation between the two expenditures it was clear that this should be reflected in the organisation.

A new media plan was developed to form a foundation …

Using Citation Data For Purchase Decisions: Analysing Citing Patterns And Journal Holdings At The Royal Institute Of Technology, Cecilia Heyman Widmark

Proceedings of the IATUL Conferences

This paper describes how citation data can be used for identifying gaps in journal holdings and in that way form a foundation for acquisitions. Citation data was matched against e-journal holdings using Web of Science™ and export files from a central knowledge base. Data for three years (2010-2012) was used, in total from 6 246 publications containing 130 090 references to 5 216 journals.

Furthermore, impact factors from Journal Citation Reports™ were added as well as information about publisher and if the journal was open access or not. The journals were also enriched with subject headings. The latter information was …

Incorporating Usability Into The Database Review Process: New Lessons And Possibilities, Ilana R. Barnes

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

The objective of this study is to examine the impact of incorporating user experience study methods into library database purchase and renewal. In the summer of 2013, Purdue libraries introduced a modified standard usability concept (heuristic evaluation, or expert review) into an existing yearly electronic resource evaluation process. Every year librarians already evaluated electronic resources in the collection using a set of parameters including usage statistics but never explicitly included database usability. Introducing more user experience parameters into process allows librarians to record usability errors to be communicated back to database vendors or to be considered for database renewal and …