Planning for the Budget-ocalypse: The Evolution of a Serials/ER Cancellation Methodology

The University of North Texas (UNT) Libraries are funded almost entirely by undergraduate student use fees. As the undergraduate enrollment has plateaued in recent years, the libraries have not been able to keep up with rising costs, resulting in a series of cuts to the materials budget totaling around $3.25 million. While some of these cuts took the form of reductions in firm orders and dissolution of approval plans, for the past three years the bulk has come from cancellations of serials and electronic resources. With each year’s cuts, the UNT Collection Development department has been forced to modify and refine their deselection process. This article will show the development of UNT’s strategy for determining cancellations using a variety of methods (overlap analysis, usage statistics, faculty input) and tools (EBSCO Usage Consolidation, Serials Solutions 360).     

Collection Analysis When the Budget Decreases

This article begins with a discussion of the rationale behind an in-depth analysis of specific areas of a law library collection and a synopsis of selected past efforts and possible reasons for such an analysis. The majority of the article details the exact steps in the analysis process, as performed by the librarians at the William A. Wise Law Library at the University of Colorado Law School. The main purpose of the Wise Library's analysis was to identify materials that could most easily be cancelled if budget cuts warranted such actions. Finally, collection development considerations that may arise when deciding if and when to cut specific materials and alternative strategies that may be employed are discussed.     

No More Liaisons: Collection Management Strategies in Hard Times

Collection development in medium to large academic libraries typically involves multiple subject librarians or “liaisons.” The University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) Libraries have lost significant numbers of personnel in the last four years due to attrition and retirements, including most of the professional liaison librarians whose positions will not be replaced in the foreseeable future. In addition to this challenge, collection budgets have been severely reduced due to the State of Alaska's ongoing budget crisis, necessitating large cancellation projects. This article examines UAF Libraries’ collection strategies used to sustain a research-intensive collection without liaisons and with a drastically reduced budget.     

Resource Management in a Time of Fiscal Scarcity: Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Assessment for Journal Package Cancellations

As a result of continual resource inflation and a decreasing budget, Kansas State University Libraries were required to conduct a large-scale electronic journal cancellation project. The current organizational model does not require librarian subject specialists to perform comprehensive collection development duties; therefore, content development librarians developed a methodology of collecting quantitative and qualitative statistics to collaboratively evaluate journals. This article will demonstrate the methodology of assessment, and serve as a working model for libraries operating under circumstances of labor shortages, budget cuts, and leadership restructuring.     

Project Transfer: A Publisher's Perspective

The Transfer Code of Conduct is designed to improve the process of journal transfer between publishers. It was launched by the UKSG (United Kingdom Serials Group) in May 2007. Taylor & Francis is one of eight publishers to support the project. It is different from previous initiatives in that it was created by publishers, librarians, and intermediaries, and it aims to provide a firmer, more practical set of guidelines than those that have been published previously. Despite a strong initial take-up, the Code has not yet been endorsed by some of the larger publishers and trade bodies. These organizations are now working with Transfer to re-draft the Code of Conduct. Once this is in place, further measures are planned to track journal transfer and monitor compliance. Long-term governance of Transfer is also being considered.     

Polishing the Crystal Ball: Using Historical Data to Project Serials Trends and Pricing

Presented by the authors of the annual Library Journal (LJ) serials pricing article, this program discussed the major serials pricing studies used by libraries. The strengths and weaknesses of methodologies utilized to create the LJ article as well as the Prices of U.S. and Foreign Published Materials Index compiled by the ALA ALCTS Library Materials Price Index Editorial Board were presented. Although the studies may have differing approaches, both clearly indicate that serial prices are increasing. Libraries need to be aware of what the impact of these price changes will be on their future budgets.     

UK Research Reserve: Working Together to Establish a National Collection

This article describes the history, structure and workings of the UK Research Reserve, a national collaborative programme to release space in Higher Education Libraries and secure copies of print journals. The program's key processes are described to illustrate how a national collection of copies for access and preservation is created using coordinated de-duplication and shared storage. Achievements to date and possibilities for future developments are outlined.     

Weeding without Walking: A Mediated Approach to List-Based Deselection

Weeding an academic library is a complicated practice that tends to arouse debate. Despite these contentions, weeding is necessary to deal with the changing needs for space in many libraries. This article describes a holistic weeding project at LaGuardia Community College Library. It reviews several approaches the project team considered and draws on research, practice, and discussion to evaluate them. It concludes that weeding requires a balance between objective rules and professional judgment. The resulting workflow uses an interactive spreadsheet to automate some of the research work involved in deciding the fate of a book, allowing librarians to practice subjective weeding without walking through the stacks.     

Checking the United Nations: A Checklist Evaluation of United Nations Specialized Agencies Serial Publications

During the spring and summer of 2008 the University of Kansas (KU) Libraries conducted a collection evaluation study on the serial sales publications issued by United Nations (UN) specialized agencies. After a checklist was compiled, KU holdings were compared to the list to develop a record of UN specialized agency serial publication holdings at KU. The goal was to identify both electronic and print holdings within this specific collection. The project also sought publications that were freely available electronically for the purpose of expanding the KU international government information collection while increasing neither the serials budget nor the physical size of the collection.     

So Many Projects,So Few Resources: Using Effective Project Management in Technical Services

Successful project management can lead to improved effectiveness and efficiency in technical services and large-scale collection management. Using project management as a tool helps academic research libraries find overlapping objectives, maximize staffing resources, and accomplish large goals that would otherwise not be possible given ongoing financial constraints. By thinking creatively about the intersection of short-term projects and long-term needs, librarians will be better able to enhance access to collections in meaningful and timely ways.     

大型文献数字化项目元数据互操作调查与启示

大型文献数字化项目元数据标准的多样性与信息资源需求接口单一性之间的冲突,使得元数据互操作势在必行。通过文献调研、比较研究、案例分析等方法对大学数字图书馆国际合作计划、谷歌图书、欧洲数字图书馆、HaithTrust、美国记忆等八个国内外知名的大型文献数字化项目的元数据互操作情况进行分析,发现映射、集成、协议和API较为常用,注册、转换和关联数据的应用范围相对较小。建议我国大型数字化项目的元数据互操作向细粒度和去格式化的方向努力。图4。表5。参考文献25。     

The Dark Side of Collection Management: Deselecting Serials from a Research Library's Storage Facility Using WorldCat Collection Analysis

To address the situation of its nearly full storage facility, the Purdue University Libraries developed guidelines for the deselection of very low–use serial titles and conducted a pilot project to identify material for withdrawal. The library school intern hired to conduct the pilot used WorldCat Collection Analysis to create subject lists of titles to be considered for withdrawal. These lists also contained value-added information about how many benchmark institutions owned and duplicated the local holdings of each title. Working with subject specialists, the intern developed criteria to guide a major serials deselection project. After the success of the internship in six subject areas, the libraries funded a longer-term position to complete the deselection project.     

No Substantial Penalty for Withdrawal: The PALCI Shared Print Journal Archive

The Pennsylvania Academic Library Consortium (PALCI) has developed a shared print archive, an archive that promises to maintain rarely used print journals from noted scientific society publishers for a ten year period. The goals for this collaborative project are to ensure access to commonly held print journal titles, to allow libraries to withdraw materials so they may re-purpose valuable space, and to share the responsibility of storing print titles at individual institutions instead of requiring a centralized storage facility. This paper discusses the grassroots origins for this project and the process decisions involved in turning the archive from vision into reality.     

The OhioLINK OCLC Collection Analysis Project: A Preliminary Report

The article will describe the plans and work to date on the OCLC Research Office and OhioLINK's joint project to analyze use data from Ohio college and university libraries. The project will create a repository of data about the circulation of monographs that can be correlated against such data points as subject, age of material, location and publisher. One of the goals of the study is to investigate whether there has been a shift in the general patterns of use of library collections in a situation where libraries have instituted patron-initiated borrowing from one another. The project is similar to a study that the OCLC Research Office did with the University of Colorado, Boulder, but on a larger scale and with the addition of information about monographs that do not circulate. An article about that study appeared in the January 2006 issue of College and Research Libraries.     

Small Scale: Using a Regional Pilot Project to Explore the Potential of Shared Print

The long-standing cooperative culture within the research library community should serve as a useful foundation for building regional cooperative agreements to support repositories of print journal backfiles. Serious storage constraints facing Iowa State University, the University of Iowa, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison mandated an effort to tackle this problem in a deliberative and coordinated way. An inter-institutional Task Force was formed to design and implement a process with a selected group of titles as a pilot project. The immediate goal was to liberate shelf space with an eye toward the future development of a consortial collection management plan for the storage of print journals among the three institutions.     

Agile Project Management in Libraries: Creating Collaborative,Resilient, Responsive Organizations

Libraries must continually adapt to meet the ever-changing needs of users. Doing so requires the ability to be flexible and respond quickly. This is a case study of how The George Washington University Libraries rethought its approach to collection development using a cross-functional, team-based strategy that leveraged the benefits of Agile project management. Adopting an Agile approach to collection development maximized the impact of the library’s financial resources and enabled staff to develop new skills. This project underscores the value of collaboration, agility, and experimentation in libraries.     

Deep in the Weeds: Faculty Participation in a Large Scale Deselection Project

In 2014, the Pollak Library at California State University, Fullerton embarked on a project to simultaneously address an outdated collection and to provide more student oriented collaborative space by creating a large-scale deselection plan. The interim University Librarian believed it prudent to offer campus faculty the ability to provide input on the deselection plan and an online application was created to allow faculty to request retention of titles selected for weeding. Feedback from an initial weeding pilot program was instructive and the tool was updated for the following deselection rounds to compel faculty to justify reasons for retaining titles and deter arbitrary requests for retention. While ultimately successful in deselecting 95,074 titles, future weeding projects will focus on the most invested partners, rather than the entire campus community. This article describes Pollak Library’s weeding project and analyzes the results of three years of faculty feedback.