Pre-1950 Serials in OCLC

To investigate the use by OCLC member institutions of database records for pre-1950 serial publications and to compare the value of those records with the ones in the long standard Union List of Serials and the newly completed National Union Catalog, Pre-1956 Imprints, a residue of 50 titles found in a random sample of 200 serials drawn from OCLC in 1978 were examined in the database again in 1981 and searched in the printed tools. The 2 OCLC records were compared to find bibliographical modifications, last time of use, and additional libraries reported. The 1981 record was compared against records from ULS and NUC Pre-1956 for the number of libraries with ownership reported and the inclusion of selected bibliographical data. OCLC participants had made some use of more than half the records and appeared to be updating the bibliographical content as necessary. Almost all the titles were in one of the printed tools, but a substantial number were not in both. NUC Pre-1956 carried more of the titles than ULS, but ULS appeared to be the most comprehensive of the 3 tools for those serials it listed. OCLC followed ULS as a bibliographical resource while NUC Pre-1956 came second for identifying holding libraries. OCLC was concluded to have strength and potential as a pre-1956 serial information tool by its capacity to correct and add data while ULS and NUC Pre-1956 were concluded to be valuable backup sources for the older serial publications also having an online record available.     

The Use of Serial Titles in Libraries with Special Reference to the Pittsburgh Study

Since the Pittsburgh Study was designed to provide measures of use that could be applied in other libraries, the question of its validity is an important one for libraries generally. A prominent feature of the Study is its estimate of the amount of use received by serials, and the percentages of serial titles expected to be used at least once during a year. This paper examines the Study's conclusions about serial use, compares these results with those reported by other libraries, and raises questions about the methods and procedures employed.     

Overlap among College and University Library Collections

Analysis of twenty-six college and university libraries' monographic holdings in WorldCat shows that university libraries hold radically more rare titles and their collections are seven times larger than college libraries. Language and Literature (Library of Congress [LC] class P) accounts for 30% of university and 27% of college holdings. The number of books held declines and the number owned by only one library increases after the 2000 publication year. Since then, total library budgets have barely kept pace with inflation and book budgets have declined as a percentage of library expenditures. These changes align with current emphasis on priorities other than book collections.     

A Vendor-Supported Experiment in Union Listing

Libraries currently face a wide assortment of choices in developing union lists. Five local libraries linked resources with a serials vendor in a unique endeavor to make maximal use of the strengths of each party. This paper discusses the development of a common database of current serial titles, assesses the success of the project, outlines plans for the future and comments on the efficacy of such an approach to union listing.     

Beyond the fringe: Administratively decentralized collections at the University of Michigan

Little is known about the materials that university departments purchase for their own use. This study examines materials purchased for other departments at the University of Michigan, whether these materials were also held in the University of Michigan Libraries' collections, and the subjects of the materials purchased. Titles purchased for departmental collections were searched in the libraries' online public catalog to determine whether they were held by the University Libraries, and if so, their subject. The majority of titles purchased for departmental libraries were held in the University Libraries collection. As a whole, the purchases were concentrated in science, technical, and medical fields; moreover, titles in these fields were more likely than others to be duplicated in the University Libraries. This study provides initial insight into the relation of independent departmental collections and raises many questions about the relation of such collections to central university libraries.     

Biotechnology awareness study, Part 2: Meeting the information needs of biotechnologists

The second part of the biotechnology awareness study focused on health sciences libraries and how well they are meeting the needs of biotechnologists working in the study's nine medical centers. A survey was conducted over a three-month period to assess the demand for biotechnology-related reference services at nine libraries and the sources the librarians used to answer the questions. Data on monographic and current serial holdings were also collected. At the end of the survey period, librarians were asked for their perceptions about biotechnology research at their institutions and in their geographic areas. Their responses were compared to the responses the scientists at the nine schools gave to the same or similar questions. Results showed few biotechnology-related reference questions were asked of the librarians. The recorded questions dealt with a range of biotechnology subjects. MEDLINE was used to answer 77% of the questions received during the survey period. More detailed notes in MeSH and a guide to online searching for biotechnology topics were suggested by the librarians as ways to improve reference service to this group of researchers. Journal collections were generally strong, with libraries owning from 50% to 87% of the titles on a core list of biotechnology journals compiled for this study. All libraries subscribed to the five titles most often cited by the scientists surveyed. Generally, librarians were unaware of the biotechnology-related research being done on their campuses or in their geographic areas.     

A cooperative serial acquisition program: thoughts on a response to mounting fiscal pressures

A regionally cooperative method of distributing responsibility for every serial title in a region is outlined. The system assures the equitable distribution of the number of titles for which each library is committed. Later refinements suggest an equalization of cost commitments on the basis of fiscal resources available for serial purchases. It is pointed out that fiscal realities will force some sort of serial acquisition cooperation for all viable medical libraries.     

Myth or reality: The absence of evangelical Christian fiction titles in the public libraries of the United States

With the emergence of evangelical Christian popular culture, debate persists about whether public libraries in the United States are purchasing evangelical Christian fiction. This study examines the presence or absence of best-selling evangelical Christian fiction titles from 1990 to 1999 in public libraries in comparison with the presence or absence of mainstream fiction bestsellers from the same period. Public libraries of some states purchase more evangelical fiction titles than others, and the proportion of evangelical fiction titles relative to total fiction titles also varies widely from state to state, and from census region to census region. Using data on the percentage of total religious adherents and evangelical adherents, variously defined, in states and census regions of the United States, a series of indexes was developed to rank states according to the proportion of their evangelical fiction titles in public libraries relative to the percentage of their evangelical population. In addition, there was a statistically significant relationship between the proportion of evangelical adherents in a state and the proportion of evangelical fiction titles held as a percentage of total fiction titles in public libraries, even when total expenditures for books and per capita expenditures were controlled for.     

MARC Record Services: A Comparative Study of Library Practices and Perceptions

The number of journal titles available in digital format to libraries through aggregators and publisher packages has increased, but library resources to catalog these titles have not kept pace with the increases. More libraries are therefore turning to MARC record service vendors to provide batches of electronic serials bibliographic records, either full or brief. This study presents the results of a survey asking library personnel about their experiences with and attitudes toward MARC record services. Although many survey participants expressed satisfaction with the services, they also responded that they would like a greater number of more accurate full bibliographic records. Also, although a majority of libraries use a separate records approach with the services, a significant minority use a single record approach.     

Scatter and obsolescence of journals cited in theses and dissertations of librarianship

This article analyzes the bibliometric features (the number of pages, completion years, the fields of subject, the number of citations, and their distribution by types of sources and years) of 100 theses and dissertations completed at the Department of Librarianship of Hacettepe University between 1974 and 2002. Almost a quarter (24%) of all dissertations were on university libraries, followed by public libraries (9%). Doctoral dissertations were, on average, twice as long as master's theses and contained 2.5 times more citations. Monographs received more citations (50%) than journal articles did (42%). Recently completed theses and dissertations contained more citations to electronic publications. Fourteen (or 3.2% of all) journal titles (including Türk Kütüphaneciliği, College & Research Libraries, and Journal of the American Society for Information Science) received almost half (48.9%) of all citations. Eighty percent of journal titles were cited infrequently. No correlation was found between the frequency of citations of the most frequently cited journals and their impact factors. Cited journal titles in master's and doctoral theses and dissertations overlapped significantly. Similarly, journal titles cited in dissertations also overlapped significantly with those that were cited in the journal articles published in the professional literature. The distribution of citations to foreign journal titles fit Bradford's Law of Scattering. The mean half-life of all cited sources was 9 years. Sources cited in master's dissertations were relatively more current. Single authorship was the norm in cited resources. Coupled with in-library use data, findings of the present study can be used to identify the core journal titles in librarianship as well as to evaluate the existing library collections to decide which journal titles to keep, discard, or relegate to off-site storage areas.     

Orbis Cascade Alliance Distributed Print Repository: Organizing Collections at the Consortial Level

Journal print archives or repositories have been in existence for some time. More recently, the academic libraries in the United States Pacific Northwest that belong to the Orbis Cascade Alliance undertook the development of a distributed repository to preserve the print journals from the American Chemical Society and the JSTOR Arts and Sciences I & II collections. The project sought to identify two complete runs of each title held between the members of the consortium and assign responsibility for preserving the titles in perpetuity. The methodology, challenges, and benefits of this project are discussed.     

The Use of Standard Selection Sources in Undergraduate Library Collection Development

The maximum use of "Books for College Libraries, Opening Day Collection," and "Choice" as book selection sources for undergraduate libraries was measured by a sampling method. A composite test sample of 600 titles was assembled from these sources and compared with the holdings of the USC, UCLA, and Stanford University undergraduate libraries. The low matching rates that were found suggest that undergraduate libraries acquire relatively few titles from these sources. Statistical treatment of the data showed the libraries to be slow in acquiring recent titles. The significance of this work lies not so much in what was learned about undergraduate libraries, but in what can be learned about the use and value of selection tools using the same approach with other types of collections. The present approach bears a resemblance to methods that have been used previously in collection evaluation, overlap studies, and the like.     

A COURSE IN SERIALS LIBRARIANSHIP AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

This article briefly describes the experience of a concentrated serials course at the Columbia University School of Library Service in the summer of 1977. The course covered current issues in the acquisition, organization, preservation, storage, and servicing of serials collections, including problems of proliferation of serial titles, rising costs, and budgetary restraints in libraries.     

Collaborative strategies for low-use research materials

Librarians are often fond of proclaiming that they are developing digital libraries. The clear evidence however is that the better strategy is to design services to “deliver digitally.” A brief overview of current, past, and future publishing trends will reveal data key to any understanding of evolving policies for preservation of a nation's intellectual output. These data highlight that academic libraries, at least, are presenting homogeneous collections of digital serials. Together with the budget pressures to maintain serial collections, the result is a lack of collecting diversity of the intellectual publishing of interest to academe. Presently, academic libraries in Australia are committing between 30% and 40% of their acquisitions budgets to digital resources. Yet, this cannot buy more than 10% of the published serials output. The availability of serial information will become more and more constrained in the very near future as the range of print serial titles shrinks in accordance with institutional buying power.CAVAL Collaborative Solutions is a consortium of Victorian university libraries and the State Library of Victoria. Established 25 years ago, it enables libraries to pursue projects together. CAVAL created the CARM Centre in 1997 to house one million volumes in state-of-the-art environmental conditions and fire suppression. The CARM Centre is unique in that it is a true collaborative collection of little used research materials. Ownership of materials is relegated to the CARM Centre. Simultaneously, each member takes on ownership of the CARM Centre's total collection. This results in a collection with no duplication, a no-discard policy, and an expectation for 250 or more years or functional service. Moreover, it provides individual libraries with a means of rationalizing collections and the ability to avoid capital expenditures. There are many implications for the member libraries as well as to the library system in Victoria and beyond.     

Undergraduate Periodicals Usage

A practical method of evaluating periodical use within the Undergraduate Library at the University of Illinois was developed in 1980. This methodology involves limited labor and costs. No complicated computer tabulations were involved in the study, which: identified individual periodical titles and ranked them according to use; identified the status of the user; identified bound volume use by title and year; and determined the loss rate, by title, of current issues. The study also contrasted current issue use with bound volume use for each title. Using this information, those titles that will satisfy 90% of the patrons' needs were identified.     

Evaluation of the TALON Cooperative Acquisitions Program for monographs

The TALON Cooperative Acquisitions Program for monographs (TALON/CAP) was implemented in 1979 by eleven resource libraries in the South Central Regional Medical Library Program. Each participating library acquired books from selected publishers within a profile covering subject and format. The program was evaluated by comparing interlibrary loan requests, surveying participants, and analyzing cataloging records. The results were that ten of the eleven libraries significantly increased their coverage of assigned publishers, and that academic medical libraries are not all buying the same books, even from major medical publishers. The fifty-six publishers in the program accounted for 60% to 83% of the titles with 1977-80 imprints held by participating libraries. The computer-generated collection analysis reports provide a baseline for future collection management studies.     

Citations and Citation Metrics in a Serial Assessment Using Master's Theses

We analyzed serial citations in 72 marine biology master's theses as well as the ranking data of aquatic science serials from six global serial citation metrics, to assess serial use by marine biology graduate students from two perspectives. From 1,035 unique serials, a core of 123 titles was identified and evaluated for access. Citation ages averaged 13.5 years, with 27% of serial citations dated prior to 1996. Students cited serials from disciplines beyond marine biology, demonstrating broad title dispersion compared to several other studies. Recommendations are offered for future investigation to develop a stronger understanding of graduate students’ use of the library's serial collection.     

Multiple Copies of Bestsellers in Public Libraries: How Much Is Enough?

How do public libraries develop their collections of high-demand materials for the “I want it now” generation? Ten public libraries’ holdings of fiction and nonfiction bestseller titles were observed over a four-week period. The number of copies rose fairly consistently, with the five fiction titles having roughly about twice the number of copies as the five nonfiction titles. The ratio of holds to copies averaged 2.7:1 and ranged from 0.8:1 to 6.5:1. Demand for e-books was consistently higher than the number of copies available, averaging more than 4:1 across all libraries.