Library Collections

Every year the Center for Research Libraries lets member libraries vote on new resources to be acquired by the center.  This helps continue to build the value of our institutional membership by adding to the already rich collections offered through CRL.  The results of the purchase proposal program for 2014 were just announced.  Eight new collections will be added and details on each are available at http://www.crl.edu/news/10165

Earlier this year VIVA’s subscription for the MLA database moved to ProQuest.  At the same time VIVA was also able to add access to Literature Online (LION) as well as premium content on the system.  LION combines the texts from works of literature with resources for criticism and reference. A new platform for LION has just been released and may be previewed at http://literature.proquest.com/

Dual access will be supported into the “first half of 2014” to allow libraries time to make the transition off the legacy platform at http://lion.chadwyck.com/

ProQuest has now provided free access for VIVA members to the ebrary Acadamic: Physical Sciences Collection (http://site.ebrary.com/lib/physsciencetitles/) with over 4,500 e-books.  ProQuest has also added complimentary full-text journal collections in seven subject areas including agriculture, aquatic science, atmospheric science, biology, computer science, environmental science and materials sciences.  Together these journal collections represent over 4,000 titles!

Beth Reiten from ProQuest is offering web-based training sessions on these new resources.  Go to https://proquestmeetings.webex.com/proquestmeetings/onstage/g.php?p=ZbIjTrisADk6CUvsMDlLaFJOtfTiiCIpD0ut6BUQGBVhtXvoHx&t=m to sign up.

The library has just licensed a new JSTOR collection.  The Arts & Sciences XI Collection features a diverse group of humanities titles, with scholarship in History, Language & Literature, and Art & Art History. Interdisciplinary titles broaden the scope of the collection to cover area studies such as American Studies, Asian Studies, Latin American Studies, African American Studies, Architectural History, and Religion. With content from fifteen countries, Arts & Sciences XI serves scholars, researchers, and students with an interest in region-based humanities.  To date in 2013, 27 new journals to this collection. Notable titles added this year include:

• Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute – published since 1919, this journal includes research, essays and book reviews.
• The Black Scholar (Paradigm Publishers) – the leading journal of black cultural and political thought in the United States.

So far this collection contains in total more than 200,000 articles (equaling nearly 1.4 million pages or approximately 350 linear feet of shelf space savings). To learn more about this collection, please visit http://about.jstor.org/content/arts-sciences-xi

We’re working on yet another shared retention pilot project.  You might remember from earlier posts that we entered an agreement with ASERL on its cooperative print journal retention program, now dubbed Scholar’s Trust.  While Scholar’s Trust focuses on journal retention, our next project will feature monographs and, initially, will involve the following VIVA libraries:  George Mason, Old Dominion, UVA, VCU, JMU, Radford, Germanna Community College, J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College, Mountain Empire Community College, University of Richmond, and Washington & Lee.  More institutions may enter the project later on.  The group has teamed up with Rick Lugg of Sustainable Collection Services, whose product SCS Greenglass provides users with a web application that allows for more systematic, collaborative, data-driven deselection and print retention practices. Just now in its infancy, the group is calculating the number of circulating monographs per institution. Materials excluded from this  project are:  government documents, special collections, microfilm, scores, materials from special libraries, and more.  The next stage involves pulling together title lists for those records and submitted them to SCS.  Greenglass will allow us to compare our titles, in addition to comparing these holdings to Worldcat holdings, HathiTrust holdings, Internet Archive holdings, and titles reviewed in Choice.  Ultimately, Greenglass should help us identify scarcely-held titles needing protection and serve as a starting place in strategic, collaborative weeding.

Here is an update from the ILS Operating Committee with news about the Sierra migration.  For more information about any of the items in this post, please contact one of the ILS Operating Committee co-chairs:  Leslie O’Brien or Curtis Carr.

Attendees found the Sierra training on August 13-14 to be helpful, especially the sessions on Administration and Circulation.  We have several service requests open for Sierra.  If there is no response, call the Help Desk to follow up on the call and provide more information, if available.  A list of the open calls can be found at the bottom of this document.

Sierra Release 1.1.2_5 was installed on Wednesday, 9/11/13.  Hardware for the training server is on order.

Millennium Support Requests are being reviewed to make sure they are still relevant.  Curtis will contact the person who originated the call for verification before requesting that III close the ticket.  Please respond to Curtis if he sends you a call, or close or update the call yourself.

Other:

• SQL access is available for pulling data out of Sierra, looking at data in MS Access.  Annette is working with selected CTS staff to build queries.  She will demonstrate at a future ILS meeting.
• Circulation Notices were not working after Sierra came up, have been working since Aug 31.  SMS (Notices texting service) is not working yet.  A Service Request has been placed.
• ITS is updating the Addison Insider website.  A notice will go out when the site is updated..
• Keith Battleson will join the ILS operating committee.  Support for Sierra has been distributed within ITS.
• Print templates uses Jasper software for setting up templates.  It can be found on CSDirect.  Keith and Jeremiah are assigned to support it.

SIERRA SERVICE REQUESTS OPEN AS OF 9/16/13

The SciTech Team recently completed a comprehensive review of the reference materials on fourth floor, downsizing the collection there by over 60%.  While they haven’t moved far, the current periodicals have now been shifted onto the shelving opened up by this process.  This in turn frees up more floor space for student use or other purposes.

As of July 1st the Interlibrary Loan unit moved to the Collections & Technical Services department on the 6th floor to become part of the Electronic Access Team (EAT).

The Borrowing and Lending functions of Interlibrary Loan can be reached at 231-6344 or at ill@vt.edu.

Interlibrary Loan material can be picked up at the Circulation Desk, and a return bin specifically for ILL material is located by the book and media return bins.

The Document Delivery function, which includes Extended Users and Desktop Delivery, remains in Access Services, and is now under the Circulation unit. If you have any questions regarding Document Delivery, you can contact Michele Canterbury at 231-3042.

Mary Lucado

It’s that time of year again!  Beginning next week Collection Management will begin looking usage and cost data related to our journal subscriptions.  Each January and July, Delores McDowell begins the time consuming process of downloading journal usage reports, also known as JR1 COUNTER Reports. (That’s well over 100 JR1 reports.)  JR1s, available to us through vendor/publisher websites, provide Collection Management with the number of successful full-text article requests by month and journal title.  (Click here for our JR1 report from Nature Publishing Group.)  After all the JR1s are downloaded, Brian Craig formats all the spreadsheets identically, then uses an advanced command to consolidate all the reports into one large report. This large report consists of 47,438 journal titles!  We have similar data going back through 2008, thus we can analyze use of these resources from 2008-2012.  In addition to looking at usage, Tracy Gilmore compiles subscription costs for all these same titles, and then computes cost per use for each title.  We then keep an eye out for titles with consistently low usage, or titles with extraordinary high-cost per use coupled by weak usage, and consider cancelling those subscriptions.  Of course, we look at several other factors before deciding to stop a subscription, including the size of the department most likely to be using that particular journal.   Looking at cost and usage data in this way on a regular basis and making cancellations based on this analysis allows us to free up funds to purchase or subscribe to new content for which there is expressed demand. In addition to looking to the JR1 and cost per use data, Ed Lener and I will be looking at circulation data for all of our print standing orders and making similar subscription decisions.

Other COUNTER reports exist, and we do collect and analyze that data, too, along with other data related to ebook and database usage. But more about that next time.

Until then, feel free to ask us questions or provide any comments you might have on cost and usage analysis.

The MLA International Bibliography will be moving to the ProQuest platform effective August 1, 2013.  This will provide a user-friendly interface for the leading bibliography of books, articles, dissertations, and websites on modern languages and literatures.  In addition, VIVA was able to negotiate favorable pricing for access to Literature Online (LION) as well as LION Premium content. These new resources combine the texts from works of literature with criticism and reference.