Library Collections

In light of the latest news about the library’s partnership with the Institute for Creativity, Arts, & Technology (ICAT), here’s an update on what’s happening with collections housed on the 1st floor.

Most of the maps and a sizable portion of the microforms will need to be moved to accommodate ICAT’s studios, workrooms, hardware storage, and instruction spaces.  The collections team, subject librarians, and maps & microforms staff are reviewing usage data, soliciting input from faculty, and investigating whether online equivalents are available to replace the existing collections.  Subject librarians have identified collections that are most heavily used, which will remain in Newman.  Some of the collections could go to the Remote Storage Building, and Dennis Herron is working with the Provost’s staff to find additional storage space.  Options for off-site storage would have to include the ability for Access Services staff to retrieve collections for use in Newman.  We haven’t ruled out the possibility of offering an off-site use option as well.  Southgate Center has been mentioned as a possibility for this option, but those plans have not been finalized.

To further reduce the footprint of the collections, and increase their accessibility, we are investigating replacing more collections with digital equivalents.  We’ve been able to withdraw the Early English Books and American Periodical Series in micro-format since we purchased online access.  Many of the microfilm journal titles are now available from journal archive purchases.  We are working with the Provost to secure some funding for additional journal archives or online newspaper collections.

Many of our maps and microforms collections are government documents.  Bruce Obenhaus is reviewing those collections and consulting with subject librarians.  We’re investigating the possibility of moving printed documents and census collections to the 5th floor, which would increase the available space for maps and microforms.

Ed Lener, Ed Brooks, and Bruce Obenhaus are carefully reviewing the map collection as well as the atlases.  Geosciences and Geography faculty have been invited to provide input on their needs.  Usage, as determined from reshelving counts, has declined significantly in recent years.  Many maps are available for free online from the U.S. Geological Survey or other sources.  The print collections will be reduced in size accordingly and focus on identifying the most important materials to keep in hard copy. Maps of Virginia and the surrounding region will also be given special preference for retention.

Please contact Connie, Ed, or Leslie if you have any questions about the overall review process, especially as you reach out to your departments for input regarding collections or the broader, ongoing goals of the library.  For more information about ICAT, visit http://www.icat.vt.edu/index.html

Hi All,

Thanks to everyone who expressed interest in participating in CAASH.  To kick things off, our members will be:  O’Brien, Leslie| Dalton, Gail | Nardine, Jennifer |Speer, Ryan | |Bowden Rosemary |Brown, Ladd | Bailey, Annette | Lener, Ed |  |Stovall, Connie | Doyle, Jana.

Sharon Gotkiewicz and Kira Dietz will attend meetings specific topics. Our first meeting will occur on October 1, 2012, 10:30 am – 11:00 am, in the boardroom. I’ll provide an agenda prior to the meeting. If you  are not on the Hub, but you have collections topics you’d like the team to consider during that meeting—or any other subsequent meetings—please feel free to send your ideas to me.

Best,

Connie

Call for Volunteers

Collection Access Analysis Strategies Hub, or: CAASH!

Should you volunteer? The answer is YES if you can answer yes to these questions: Do you have a strong interest in collections access and analysis?  Would you like to help brainstorm and provide input for developing strategies to provide timely access, anywhere, anytime—on a budget? Would you like to participate in brainstorming discussions to determine the type of analysis necessary to make this a reality?  Are you inclined to work across traditional boundaries and ideas, while also thinking systemically about how our goals fit in with our institution’s mission?

Please click on the link and fill out our Google form to volunteer by September 10, 2012.

•  Six volunteers will be chosen.
• First meeting October 1, 2012, 10:30 am – 11:00 am,  in the boardroom

Goal for the Hub

Our broad goal is predefined in the VT Libraries Strategic Directions, 2012-2018. Stated goal of collection access: Provide timely discovery and transmission of all information resources anytime, anywhere.

More specifically, this group will work together to identify more detailed strategies to make this broader goal a reality.

In terms of collections assessment/analysis, we’ll first define our mission. Questions to consider: Who and what are we attempting to support through providing collections access? What can we do to ensure we are providing the most needed/used resources for the best possible costs?  How do we go about assessing collections access?  We’ll aim to develop more specifics: What do we want to learn from our analysis? What data is necessary to collect?  Who needs to be involved?  How might roles change to meet goals? How do we identify in-demand resources to which we currently do not provide timely access, anywhere, anytime? How do we make such resources available?

HUB Members will want to be well acquainted with these articles:

2012 Top Ten Trends in Academic Libraries: A Review of the Trends and Issues affecting Academic Libraries.  C & RL News June 2012: 311-320. http://crln.acrl.org/content/73/6/311.full

ARL Strategic Plan 2010-2012

Strategic Direction: Transforming Research Libraries: Outcomes & Strategies

http://www.arl.org/arl/governance/strat-plan/trl.shtml

A Plan For A New Horizon: Envisioning Virginia Tech, 2012-2018 Strategic Plan.

http://www.president.vt.edu/strategic-plan/strategic-plan.html

Redefining the Academic Library: Managing the Migration to Digital Information Services. University Leadership Council.  2011.  http://www.educationadvisoryboard.com/pdf/23634-EAB-Redefining-the-Academic-Library.pdf

We now have nearly 9,000 discovery records in Addison and Summon for EBL e-books.   Patrons are browsing the titles, reading them online, and downloading portions of the books.  The title that was downloaded most often is: Completing college : rethinking institutional action (LC148 .T568 2012)

The 10 most-read titles are:

• Diagnosing and changing organizational culture (HD58.8.C32 2011)
• Parking cars in America, 1910-1945: a history (TL175.S44 2012)
• Reframing organizations: artistry, choice, and leadership (HD31,B6135 2008)
• Organizational network fieldbook: best practices, techniques, and exercises to drive organizational innovation and performance (HD69.S8O74 2010)
• Sex for sale: prostitution, pornography, and the sex industry (HQ115 .S49 2009)
• Conducting educational research design: what, why, and how (LB1028.38 M35 2012)
• Prostitution and sex work (HQ144.D58 2010)
• Handbook of college reading and study strategy research (LB2395.3.H36 2008)
• Architectural photography: composition, capture, and digital image processing (TR659)
• Forest products and wood science (TA419.S423 2011)

The next phase of the pilot will expand DDA to more vendors and more subject areas.  VIVA will be contracting for DDA services in spring 2013.

The University Libraries have joined HathiTrust as of July 2012.  HathiTrust has two levels of partnership: sustaining and content-contributing.  As sustaining partners, VT has full viewing and downloading abilities for public domain materials and materials for which HathiTrust has received permissions for downloading.  All HathiTrust holdings are indexed and discoverable through Summon.

IP recognition has been turned on; you can also test Shibboleth authentication.   Click the Login link from the top right or within the pink box, choose Virginia Tech in the Partner Institution dropdown window, and enter your VT PID and password.  To see an example of full-text downloading, search the HathiTrust catalog for the title “Historic Dress in America, 1607-1800” by Elisabeth McClellan, published in 1904.

We plan to send updates about HathiTrust internally as we discover more about it’s features and content.  Notification will go out to the university community after the start of the semester.  In the meantime, please send any questions or comments to me or post them to the blog.

Collection Management and Technical Services have been working out the details for a demand-driven pilot project since last fall.  We’ve hosted webinars and vendor visits, conference calls and work flow meetings, and are finally ready to launch the pilot next week.  Below are some answers to some basic questions about the project.  More details will be distributed during implementation of the pilot.  Please address any specific questions about the project to Ladd, Leslie, Connie, or Ed.

WHAT IS DDA? DDA stands for demand driven acquisitions.  In our case, it involves loading e-book cataloging records (“discovery records”) into Summon and/or Addison.  We don’t actually own the titles until patron use triggers a purchase.

WHEN WILL THE PILOT PROJECT START? The first batch of discovery records will be shipped on July 16, 2012.

WHO IS THE VENDOR FOR DDA?  The primary vendor is EBL, who will supply books through YBP.  We are planning to set up another pilot with EBSCOHost.

WHAT TITLES WILL BE SELECTED FOR THE PILOT?  All GOBI e-slips for e-books in call numbers H, J, K, L & T will go into a “consideration pool” for DDA.  Not all publishers allow their titles to be eligible for DDA, so the pool is limited to DDA-eligible e-books.  In addition to current e-slip titles, YBP will load three years of retrospective imprints into the consideration pool.  We will have the opportunity to review the titles in the pool weekly and add or remove titles.

HOW ARE TITLES IN THE CONSIDERATION POOL PURCHASED?  The first official “use” of a title is treated as a “short term loan” or STL.  The library sets the threshold for the number of STLs allowed before a real purchase is triggered.  STLs are billed at 10-15% of the purchase price.  These configurations can be altered as we gain more experience.

WHAT QUALIFIES AS AN STL?  Browsing the table of contents or paging through the book is free.  After 5 minutes, the patron “checks out” the e-book for 7 days.  He or she has unlimited access to the title for the 7 day period.

HOW DOES DOWNLOADING WORK?  Just as with firm ordered or subscription based ebooks, downloading depends on the publisher specifications.  We’ll be distributing more information on publisher-specific downloading.

HOW WILL PATRONS DISCOVER DDA E-BOOKS?  The initial batch of DDA records will be put in Summon and Open URL linking will be enabled.  The intention is to make the records fully discoverable through Addison and Summon.

As of July 1, 2012, the Libraries are sustaining partners of the Hathi Trust Digital Library.   The Hathi Trust is a shared repository of digital content scanned from over 50 research library partners across the United States and Europe.  It also includes content from Google Books and the Internet Archive.  As of January 2012, the repository had over 10m volumes, nearly 3m of which are in the public domain.

When set up is completed (by fall semester), VT patrons will be able to search across the full text of all volumes in the repository.  Using Shibboleth authentication, they can also download public domain volumes in their entirety.  Besides public domain volumes, partners have full viewing and downloading abilities for materials for which Hathi has received permissions.

Users with print disabilities can get specialized access to public domain and in-copyright materials. Hathi Trust facilitates other lawful uses of in copyright such as those afforded by US copyright law: Section 108 (print replacement copies, digital access to applicable works) and fair uses of in-copyright materials. Access to in-copyright materials, including for users who have print disabilities, is subject to laws of the country where the partner institution is located.

Currently, VT patrons can discover Hathi Trust items in Summon or in the native interface.  An API will allow us to link from Addison print records to a digital copy in the repository, if one exists.

More information on Hathi Trust will be forthcoming as we complete the set up steps of our partnership agreement.

Welcome to the Collection Management Newsletter. Expect to hear from us more frequently now that the blog is up and running.

There’s quite a bit of information to pass along since the last time I wrote in late May.  We’ve just wrapped up a fiscal year, so you will find below information summarizing our acquisitions and projects activity for the year–in addition to more recent information.

First for the Short and Sweet…

• Collection Management welcomes Tracy Hall to University Libraries! We’re happy to have her here with us (even if she is a Tiger fan).
• Monena Hall will now serve as selector for Children’s and Young Adult Literature
• Leslie, Ed, and I working to create a Collection Management priority list for 2013
• Our next Collection Management meeting will be held July 19, 10:30 a.m., in the boardroom.
• HathiTrust: We are working through the set up process for our partnership and should be ready by mid-July.
• Charleston: Don’t forget! If you plan on submitting a proposal for the Charleston Conference, proposals are due July 13, 2012.
• Connie Stovall (yes, me) will be the next co-chair of ASERL’s Collection Development Initiative beginning  July 2, 2012 through  June 30 – 2014.  Michael Arthur (U-Central Florida) serves as the other co-chair.  This initiative has built a strong sense of community across ASERL libraries, and has several innovative webinars in the pipeline for the coming year.
• Collection analysis—While we are always engaged in collection analysis of some kind, in July we will begin looking at usage  and cost data for existing  journal packages. Such data analysis will drive subscriptions cancellations and acquisitions.
• DDA, or demand driven acquisitions, pilot project: Ladd and his team have all the details worked out and will have DDA ready for July 1. We hope, eventually, DDA will reduce and replace a significant amount firm order and approval spending, varying by discipline, of course.

The Big Picture

• Interested in understanding where academic libraries are headed or what drives some of our initiatives?  College & Research Library News just published 2012 Top Ten Trends in Academic Libraries: A review of the trends and issues affecting academic libraries in higher education.

Resources Already Under Consideration for 2013

• We have  purchased the Springer Protocols Archive, 1980 to 2011, and the 2012 Protocols. This will allow us to cancel  print standing orders and eliminate Springer Protocols  from the approval plan.  The purchase could allow us to send over 1,000 print books to storage, while offering a comparable number of ebooks to our STEM faculty, students, and staff.

• We are considering the purchase of JSTOR Collections IX, X, XI, all of which can be purchased now using a one-time purchase model (versus paying ongoing costs for the collections). These collections will provide broad coverage in business and STEM fields, the social sciences, and the arts and humanities.

Fiscal Year 2012 Resource Acquisitions and Projects In Review

In past newsletters, we have talked quite a bit about the ASERL Cooperative Print Journal Archive Review.  We now have a table availablesummarizing the year’s work on this project.

Additionally, we compile a list of Total Acquisitions for 2012.

Until next time,

Connie

Collection Management Welcomes Purdom Lindblad! 

Purdom, University Libraries’ College Librarian for Humanities & Digital Humanities, will be selecting resources for the departments of English, Philosophy, and Religion & Culture.

ASERL Cooperative Print Journal Archive Progress

To date, we have committed to retaining over 400 titles to ASERL’s Cooperative Print Journal Retention Archive. Collection management and selectors have completed approximately two-thirds of the titles to be reviewed for this initiative. Thus far, the selectors look to be on schedule to complete the evaluation of this set of titles by mid-September. Under this same, larger archive, Virginia Tech’s University Libraries will be working with cohorts at the University of Florida and Auburn University to record all of the agriculture titles committed by all the institutions.  Such a collection will help complement the archival partnership between the Center for Research Library’s (CRL) and the United States Agriculture Information Network (USAIN); the joint serials agriculture archive will rely on government documents and microfilm for archives rather than print.  As Virginia Tech, ASERL, and other regional print archives amass and record collections, anyone will be able to search all of those holdings in one database, called PAPR (Print Archives Preservation Registry), thanks to a collaboration between CRL and the California Digital Archive.

Wrapping up FYE 2012 with New Acquisitions

After reviewing selectors’ recommendations and identifying key digital archives, Collection Management acquired (or is in the process of acquiring) acquiring several new resources for our community.  Those resources includes new print and  ejournal subscriptions, three new JSTOR modules  and Project Muse Premium, totaling over 700 full-text titles in business, social science, and humanities. Additionally, Collection Management purchased a Wiley-Blackwell journal archive, including the full-text to 229 journals in business, biotechnology, education, environmental sciences, geography, history, language & literature, philosophy, political science, and religion. Beyond electronic serials, we will now have access to Sage Research Methods Online, Trade & Quote Data from WRDS, The Roper Center Public Opinion Archives, Proquest Statistical Insight, Rand State Statistics, Plunkett Research Online, Orlando: Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present, The Glossary of Geology, Hein Online US Congressional Documents and US Federal Agency documents.

Demand Driven Acquisitions (DDA) Implementation

Ladd Brown and his DDA team are working to set up a demand driven acquisitions pilot program using  Yankee Book Peddler (YBP), our bookjobber.  With DDA, we will load preselected “discovery” records into Addison and Summon.  We’ll use similar criteria for selecting these records as for our print approval plan.  Patrons can view the records and table of contents, and even spend some time in the full-text at no charge to the library.  After a specific length of time is spent in the text, either a short term loan (STL) or a purchase will be triggered.  Patrons will not be aware that an STL or purchase is taking place—access to the content is instantaneous. Having said that, ebook purchases over a stipulated amount will be mediated by collection management.  We will also have the ability to exclude many types of purchases, like some pop items or textbooks, if we choose to do so.  During the pilot project, a pool of discovery records from the last few years of available ebooks beginning with Library of Congress subjects Education, Computer Science, History, and Business will be uploaded and ready for patrons.  The pilot is scheduled to begin in June.

 Print Journal Deselection Progress

 Beginning just after the Spring semester closes, the Shelving Unit will begin shifting all materials on the 2^nd floor. In sum, several ranges that now restrict the view to the very successful Writing Center will be pushed back by at least 7 ranges.  To do so, we have been reviewing print journals that also have an electronic equivalent.  In that case, selectors and collection management are working to decide if those titles should go to storage or go to recycling. Similar analysis of print serials collections are being conducted for all other floors.

Other News to Note

Selectors should be happy to know that we are working on a web-based proposal form for new resources.  This form will replace the existing proposal forms which exist as Word templates in Scholar.  The new resource proposal form will feed information into an Access database, allowing Collection Management to better manage the budgeting process. Submitting the forms will become much easier for subject selectors.   Additionally, a team consisting of members from all units in Technical Services and Collection Management is collaborating to improve workflow and communication of workflows of digital resources.  We are also investigating improvements to the trouble-shooting process for digital resources. At this point, we rely mostly on email to communicate these issues. Planned changes will  enable us to track data, look for trends, and become more efficient.

 On the subject of communication, expect changes to the Collection Management newsletter over the summer.  Two blogs will be formed: one will exist to provide news to all library personnel, and a second will exist to provide news of new acquisitions and other collection concerns to the University Community.  Further, in effort to provide more communication library-wide, a group formed voluntarily (Kira Dietz, Annette Bailey, Rebecca Miller, and Connie Stovall) have committed to create and maintain departmental blogs and syndicate all of the information into one larger University Libraries blog.  Other volunteers from different units are welcome to join us.  We plan to make these blogs available by mid-summer. You are welcome to test-view the internal use Collection Management Newsletter blog and the external use Research Collections blog.  Suggestions for content are encouraged!