Library Collections

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!