Library and Information Science Commons^™

Do We Approve? New Models For Assessing Approval Plans, Sarah Tudesco, Julie Linden, Daniel Dollar

Charleston Library Conference

Yale Library’s Collection Development Department and Assessment Librarian teamed up to build an approval plan assessment model that builds on traditional approaches to add new assessment tools and ask new questions, and particularly to consider approval plans not in their silo but in the broader ecosystem of monograph collection and use within Yale Library and in its primary resource-sharing network, Borrow Direct. This short paper describes key aspects of this project, which is a work in progress, as well as possible future directions for approval plan assessment.

The Librarian’S Survival Guide To The “Big Deal”: Tools For Unbundling, Samuel Cassady, Doug Lynch, Leanne Olson, Alie Visser

Charleston Library Conference

At Western University, like many other schools, journal package “big deals” (large, bundled collections of ejournals from the same publisher, purchased at a discount) have been seen as beneficial to the collection based on high discounts and low cost per use. When the Canadian loonie fell to 67 cents on the U.S. dollar in January 2016, it created unexpected financial challenges for collections management. We now had to consider new ways to find cost savings by canceling or unbundling resources, and big deals became a potential target. In evaluating these packages, we looked beyond cost per use, building on work …

Book Usage Is Rollin’ Down: Multifaceted Assessment Of Monograph Collection Performance To Optimize Purchase Decisions, Tricia L. Clayton, Skye C. Hardesty

Charleston Library Conference

Georgia State University’s print circulation has declined over 50% since 2010. Collection development librarians made several small-scale adjustments to address this trend, yet the drop off in use continued unabated. We had to totally rethink the book budget. To make changes strategically and responsibly, we needed answers to a variety of questions: Are there disciplines that do not need firm order allocations or even monographs? Does format matter? Does it matter how the titles are acquired with regard to approval versus firm order versus demand-driven acquisition (DDA)?

This paper discusses the multifaceted data-driven analysis we developed in order to provide …

Mapping Change: An Examination Of Curricular Shifts And Collection Impact, Michael A. Matos, Jenise R. Overmier

Charleston Library Conference

Whether adding a new course or ending a program, curricular changes represent a formal notification from the university to the library that it must support. At American University, all curriculum changes require, as part of the approval process, a library review. While these reviews are shared with collection managers, there has never been a systematic review of the effect the changes have had on purchasing and use. One of the most prohibitive factors in undertaking such as review is that curricular changes are often difficult to map to collections because they reflect interdisciplinary adjustments or courses that push the boundary …

A Tale Of Two Serials Cancellations, Mike Olson, David Killian, Debbie Bezanson, Robin Kinder

Charleston Library Conference

Beginning in 2016, both Western Washington University (WWU) and George Washington University (GWU) found that they needed to make significant and similar reductions in continuations costs over the next five years. In response, this past year, both institutions took independent, significant steps toward these ends, developing systematic, sustainable procedures for addressing these reductions. The approaches taken by the two institutions will be compared and contrasted in this presentation, particularly with respect to the following questions, which both libraries encountered:

• What defines a successful cancellation process in 2016?
• What are the most effective approaches to cancelling serials?
• When do cancellations do …

To Buy Or Not To Buy: Rolling Into The Future With Illiad, Alison E. Lampley

Charleston Library Conference

Librarians at East Tennessee State University (ETSU) have spent a lot of time over the past few years eliminating paper waste and encouraging the use of digital forms for many library services. One such service is the library’s suggest-a-purchase program. When the database that held our previous online form was dismantled, paper forms and e-mails starting coming in. Most of those e-mails were printed out by library staff. The previous acquisitions librarian retired soon after, leaving behind mountains of papers and no real idea for how to proceed. This paper presents how we solved this problem with ILLiad addons and …

Housing Diversity In Children’S Literature, Carla Earhart

Charleston Library Conference

Previous studies have examined diversity in children’s literature: Gender diversity, racial diversity, religious diversity, and diversity in family composition. This project examines an often overlooked diversity issue in children’s literature: Housing diversity. In the stories they read and the accompanying images, children need to see a variety of housing environments and need to see the settings and the people portrayed in a positive manner.

Renting an apartment is an increasingly popular housing option for many families. However, many children’s books glamorize living in a traditional house. Using a rubric designed by the course instructor, students in a university immersive learning …

Albatross: Rolling On A Sea Of Data, Annette Bailey, Tracy Gilmore, Leslie O'Brien, Anthony D. Wright De Hernandez

Charleston Library Conference

Big deals and journal package incentives are an increasing reality for academic libraries, yet the solutions for evaluating these package scenarios in a timely, cost-effective manner are few. The proliferation of these offers requires the examination of numerous and complex questions. There is a need to know the utilization and strength of a package, the inflation costs for various titles and packages, and the ability to identify cost trends. A team of librarians at Virginia Tech created a solution for addressing these concerns and for managing their journal data by designing and developing an in-house database. Albatross, named in reference …

Rolling The Dice And Playing With Numbers: Statistical Realities And Responses, Natasha Cooper, Kimberly Nolan, Mike Poulin, Nancy Turner

Charleston Library Conference

Librarians invest time gathering numbers about collections for various entities, such as accrediting groups and organizations, as well as their user communities. Gathering collections-related statistics regarding the numbers of things our libraries subscribe to or purchase, as well as the items our users use, often requires a significant investment in time. Definitions can be difficult to apply, and some questions do not seem to reflect our current reality or demonstrate value. The authors explore the challenges of annually gathering and recording collections related statistics and offer suggestions for improving the process.

Extreme Makeover: How We Decreased Our Collection By 40% And Simultaneously Increased It By 50% In 10 Months, Lydia A. Sampson, Amy Thurlow, Del Hornbuckle

Charleston Library Conference

The Brennan Library at Lasell College had not conducted a systematic weeding in over 20 years. With space in demand and an increase in online courses, desperate times called for drastic measures. Over a 10-month period, the library withdrew 40% of its tangible collections. Simultaneously, the staff’s focus shifted to promoting e-resources and adopting the EBSCO EDS discovery layer. Using a weighted collection development allocation formula, the librarians overhauled the materials budget and designed a departmental liaison program. After calculating the holdings of new e-book and streaming video packages, the library’s collection increased by 50% despite the massive deaccessioning. This …

Apples To Oranges: Comparing Streaming Video Platforms, Steven Milewski, Monique Threatt

Charleston Library Conference

Librarians rely on an ever-increasing variety of platforms to deliver streaming video content to our patrons. These two presentations will examine different aspects of video streaming platforms to gain guidance from the comparison of platforms. The first will examine the accessibility compliance of the various video streaming platforms for users with disabilities by examining accessibility features of the platforms. The second will be a comparison of subject usage of two of the larger video streaming platform providers (Alexander Street Press and Kanopy) done at Indiana University Bloomington, a large public university.

Assessing The Books We Didn’T Buy (The Sequel), Erika L. Johnson, Glenn Johnson-Grau, Rice Majors

Charleston Library Conference

Three universities (Santa Clara University, the University of San Francisco, and Loyola Marymount University) are leveraging patron-initiated borrowing data to inform our collection development. Expanding on a pilot project that began in 2014, we have been looking at five years of recent borrowing data, along with five years of acquisition data and five years of circulation data of local collections, to help us define what a “normal” level of borrowing looks like as well as identify gaps in local collections. We are also using the data to strengthen the meta-collection of our consortium (LINK+) through the intentional and coordinated diversification …

Valuing Consortial Resources: A Framework For Assessment, Genya O'Gara, Madeline Kelly, Julie Kane, Anne Osterman, Cheryl Duncan, Crystal Newell, Beth Blanton-Kent, Summer Durrant

Charleston Library Conference

Grounded assessment begins with establishing the goals of an institution and its users, but there is an added layer of complexity in determining value at the consortial level, where individual institutions will naturally perceive the value of a particular resource differently. The shared resources of a consortium are also often diverse in both format and acquisition method. How should the relative value between e-books and streaming media be compared? Between leased and demand-driven acquisitions? Between open access and collaboratively owned models?

Rolling Out A Database Review: Initiating A Comprehensive Database Review At The University Of Maryland Libraries, Leigh Ann Depope, Margaret Z. Saponaro

Charleston Library Conference

The University of Maryland Libraries (UMD) has experienced a static collection budget for over 14 years. Despite the best efforts of the Collection Development and Acquisitions departments to mitigate the continuing effect of serials inflation, it became evident in the summer of 2015 that budgetary expenses would have to be curtailed in order to meet increasing serials costs. In the fall of 2015, the libraries initiated the first-ever comprehensive database review across all subject areas. The review involved subject specialists as well as acquisitions and collection development personnel. This paper describes the process undertaken to develop the review process, who …

An Infographic Is Worth A Thousand Words: Using Data Visualization To Engage Faculty In Collection Strategies, Beth D. Bohstedt

Charleston Library Conference

Like the rest of us, faculty are less likely to read a table of data than to engage with a pictorial representation of the same information. Using words and visuals together has been proven to increase understanding and interest. This paper will describe recent efforts at Hamilton College to engage our stakeholders, especially faculty, in the assessment, analysis, and development of our library collections. Using graphs, charts, and other visual representations, we effectively presented our current state, acquisitions history, trends in checkouts and electronic hits, and budget allocation. Included here is a summary of the types of data chosen to …

Time To Take New Measures: Developing A Cost-Per-Cited-Reference Metric For The Assessment Of E-Journal Collections, Megan G. Kilb, Virginia B. Martin, Tessa L. Minchew

Charleston Library Conference

The current primary quantitative measure of e-journal subscription return-on-investment (ROI) is cost-per-use (CPU). While CPU is widely used, it also widely criticized and should not be relied on to the exclusion of other factors when assessing ROI. Because CPU is an imperfect measure, the authors developed a new, complementary metric for evaluating e-journal subscription ROI: Cost-per-cited reference (CPCR). CPCR assigns a dollar value to each citation of a particular journal by authors affiliated with the subscribing institution during a specified time period. By focusing on the content that researchers cite in their scholarly output, a CPCR metric assists in measuring …

Efficient Deselection And Other Stories: A Fellowship At Unc Charlotte, Stephen G. Krueger

Charleston Library Conference

This paper will describe the collection development project done by a summer fellow at the J. Murrey Atkins Library at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. The project took place over the summer of 2016. The fellow worked with the health sciences librarian and the collection development librarian to assess the health sciences resources held by the library. Elements included compiling acquisition recommendations, surveying faculty and other health sciences librarians, drafting a collection development policy, and recommending titles for deselection. The deselection section also served as a pilot for a larger library-wide project.

Stretching Your Dollars: Saving On Online Content, Linda Creibaum, Jeff Bailey

Charleston Library Conference

This session, led by two librarians with decades of combined acquisitions experience, was based on the premise that although quality databases can be expensive and only the most fortunate of libraries have unlimited or even plentiful financial resources, there are ways to save funds on these resources. The presenters shared their knowledge about ways to stretch finite library acquisitions funds.

Linda Creibaum and Jeff Bailey emphasized tools and strategies attendees could use to save valuable funds on databases and subscriptions. Discussion topics included consortial and volume discounts, the advantages of taking a trial, the importance of keeping notes and checking …

How A New Library System Changed The Way We Think About Acquisitions And Collection Development, Thomas A. Karel, Bonnie Powers

Charleston Library Conference

Franklin & Marshall College (F&M) is a small undergraduate institution with a full-time equivalent (FTE) of approximately 2,400 students. In the summer of 2016, the library migrated to Online Computer Library Center’s (OCLC) WorldShare Management System (WMS). This change to a cloud-based library system gave us an opportunity to consider new ways of doing cataloging, circulation, and acquisitions. This presentation will primarily discuss the changes that were implemented to the allocation of funds for ordering materials and the impact of those changes, including the way we now approach collection development.

Where Is The Library Budget Going? Using Ils Fund Codes And Reports For Fiscal Accountability, Debbi Smith

Charleston Library Conference

Our collections continue to migrate to an online environment, but often administrators outside the library are tied to fiscal concepts that do not reflect new formats and modes of access. Administrators look at electronic resource expenditures and don’t always understand that they are not just for databases but also for e-journals and e-books that can be subscribed to or owned. Fund code structures that are built into instrument landing systems (ILS) such as Innovative’s Sierra can be used to demonstrate how material budgets are expended by format and function, which can then be tied into more formal assessment and analysis …

Budgeting In An Academic Library: A Lively Lunch Discussion, Karin Wikoff

Charleston Library Conference

Are you always seeking to improve budgeting in your academic library? Are you fascinated by the challenge of predicting costs for subscriptions? I went on an "Academic Library Budgeting Roadshow," and had discussions with peers at seven other institutions. In this session, I will present a summary of my findings, then pose the same questions to the group. We'll discuss everything from the budget process and timeline, to allocating funds, to predicting subscription costs, to what you do if you go over or under budget, to flexibility, to deposit accounts, to Zero-Based Budgeting, to the biggest challenges we each face. …

From Usability Studies To User Experience: Designing Library Services At The University Of Kansas, Lea H. Currie, Julie Petr

Charleston Library Conference

The University of Kansas (KU) Libraries first made their discovery tool, Primo (Ex Libris), available to their users in the fall of 2013. Since that time, in spite of many upgrades and improvements, most librarians and library staff are still not using the tool for their own research. Last year, librarians from KU presented their findings at the Charleston Conference using a survey given to KU librarians that asked them to compare Primo to Google Scholar and their favorite databases. Librarians were asked to compare the three and make recommendations for improving Primo. This year, KU librarians designed a much …

Giving Subject Specialists The Tools They Need To Succeed: The Collection Development Training Manual At The University Of Maryland, Margaret Z. Saponaro

Charleston Library Conference

The University of Maryland Libraries (UMD) employs over 40 librarians with collection development responsibilities. These subject specialists represent a range of varying experience levels with collection development—from new librarians to seasoned veterans. Although many subject specialists are required to use the same tools for their collection development activities, materials to support these activities were not always easy to find, nor was there one place available to direct new subject specialists who needed resources to assist them with their responsibilities. This paper describes the process undertaken to develop of a toolkit for materials for subject specialists at the UMD Libraries, including …

How Far Have We Come Since Our “Go Live” Dates, And Where Do We Go From Here?, Ann Kutulas, Moon Kim, Susan Flanagan

Charleston Library Conference

Next‐generation library systems promise new opportunities to expand beyond our existing methodologies, and there has been a surge of institutions migrating to web‐based platforms as a result. Extensive research and planning goes into choosing and moving to a new integrated library system (ILS). But what happens after migration and implementation? And how closely does reality align with expectations? Individuals from three libraries who have chosen Ex Libris’s Alma as their web‐based ILS solution will share their migration experiences and the challenges of working in a constantly changing environment. Strategies on transitioning from an abstract understanding to a live production site …

Don’T Share This Item! Developing Digital Collections And Services In A Consumer‐Licensed World, William M. Cross, Darby Orcutt

Charleston Library Conference

Libraries have always faced unique challenges in providing non‐academic content for academic use, but the digital age has brought particular problems of “one size fits all” consumer purchase models and vexing methods of digital rights management (DRM), wrapped up with a large bow of legal uncertainty for many institutions. These proceedings describe some practices for sharing consumer‐licensed popular materials and confronting legal and technical barriers, as well as what some libraries are considering and encountering in applying the law, fair use, user expectations, and common sense in developing collections and services around digital content that is geared directly to end …

Mitigating Madness: How We Authenticate And Authorize Users To Deliver Databases In A Contractually Complicated Context, Jeremy M. Brown, Geoffrey P. Timms

Charleston Library Conference

During the 2011 overhaul of the Mercer University Libraries website we developed an authentication system to interface with EZProxy and our campus Active Directory system that provides convenient management and delivery of our A–Z database listing. With multiple campuses and seven e‐resource privilege groups, we were able to provide persistent URLs for databases to subject librarians, dynamic database lists based upon users’ access privileges, convenient integration with our content management system, and a simple backend management interface requiring little expertise to use. We then sought to improve the situation by organizational and license simplification before our 2014 website overhaul: We …

How Much Do Monographs Cost? And Why Should We Care?, Nancy L. Maron, Charles Watkinson, Meredith Kahn, Shayna Pekala

Charleston Library Conference

What does it cost to make a high quality, digital monograph? What may sound like an obvious question turns out to be a very knotty one, driving to the heart of the essence of scholarly publishing today. It is particularly relevant in an environment where the potential of a sustainable open access (OA) business model for monographs is being explored. Two complementary studies funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2015 have explored this question to understand the costs involved in creating and disseminating scholarly books.

The team at Ithaka S+R studied the full costs of publishing monographs by …

The Changing Nature Of Oa Journals: Helping Scholars Identify The Good, The Bad, And The Political, Matthew C. Torrence, Susan Ariew

Charleston Library Conference

When the Open Access (OA) movement began at the beginning of the 21st century, librarians and select scholars saw it as a way to level the playing field by disseminating scholarly work freely, by easing the financial burden placed on rising subscription costs, and by offering alternatives to the traditional publishing model. Predatory and opportunistic OA publishers were quick to arrive on the scene, however, leaving faculty and researchers scrambling for a new and updated vetting process for selecting their publication targets. Jeffrey Beall’s blog and Beall’s List, along with other important publication directories, have become an important part of …

Open Access Funds: Getting A Bigger Bang For Our Bucks, Robert Glushko, Crystal Hampson, Patricia Moore, Elizabeth Yates

Charleston Library Conference

Many libraries offer open access publishing funds to support authors in paying article processing charges (APC) levied by some OA journals. However, there are few standard practices for managing or assessing these funds. The Open Access Working Group (OAWG) of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) was asked to investigate and articulate best practices for successful open access fund management. In spring 2015, the OAWG surveyed Canadian academic libraries with OA funds to review their criteria and collect feedback on current practices. The survey proved timely because many OA funds are under review. Shrinking budgets, ending pilots, and questions …

The Open Movement: What Libraries Can Do, Sheila Corrall

Charleston Library Conference

Open approaches have moved beyond open access, open source software, and open courseware to developments with open infrastructure and open processes. Open initiatives are gaining momentum as a result of both bottom‐up grassroots activism and top‐down policy agenda. In a few instances, they have already reached a tipping point; but in many cases they are being pursued separately by specialist groups, suffering from fragmentation, and not always having their expected outcomes or impacts. Our study of open initiatives uses a simple overarching definition of open resources, and introduces a convenient framework enabling shared understanding of three different types of openness—open …