User-Based Serials Collection Development

UNC Pembroke Background FTE undergraduate degrees offered 16 graduate degrees offered 72% commuters 40% non-traditional 16 to 1 student to faculty ratio Strong distance education program 1 Serials Librarian

Current Method of Journal Selection Compile a list of departmental subscription including cost and usage statistics. Send list to faculty for review. Seek faculty input for cancellations and new subscription Send journal catalogs and pamphlets to departments

Problems with the Current Method Accurate stats are hard to keep. Many titles are cross-disciplinary and on multiple department lists. Not all members of the department will see the list. Titles cancelled by one person may be being used by another. Faculty may base decisions solely on cost. New titles often include items only needed for faculty member’s short term research. Faculty sometimes request titles that are out of print.

Experimental Collection Development Using hard data to drive collection development

Methodology Get input from Reference staff Review Interlibrary loan requests Review “no-hits log” in Journal Finder Review database vendor statistics

Input from Reference Librarians Talked with reference librarians about collection policy. Asked them to report titles that frequently come up in abstract form only. Created a web form where they can submit journal requests.

Reference Desk Request Results Reference librarians showed interest in the idea but weren’t participating. Only 6 requests. Requests came from only 2 people.

Interlibrary Loan Requests Ran the ILL report for the period of 09/06- 02/07 Sorted by title

200+ titles requested between September 2006 and March % were requested less than 3 times 90 requested 3 or more times were added to the “Journals to consider” list. Interlibrary Loan Requests

Journal Finder “no-hits log” Tracked “no-hits log” from September 2006 through the present. Broke this list down into the following categories –Titles with multiple listings –Titles that should have been found –Searches that weren’t journal searches

Journal Finder Results 30% of searches were not for journal titles 10% of searches failed due to misspellings or too much information 117 titles worth reviewing –62 titles added to the “Journals to Consider” list. –55 had multiple hits within same hour

Example of Title Reviewed Journal of prevention & intervention in the community.UNC Pembroke campus10/12/2006 9:07 Journal of prevention & intervention in the community.UNC Pembroke campus10/12/2006 9:07 Journal of prevention & intervention in the community.UNC Pembroke campus10/12/2006 9:07 Journal of Psychiatric Research /5/ :13 Journal of Psychiatric Research /10/ :40 Journal of Psychiatric ResearchUNC Pembroke campus10/30/ :18 Journal of Psychiatric ResearchUNC Pembroke campus11/16/2006 4:50 Journal of Psychiatric ResearchUNC Pembroke campus11/18/ :24 Journal of Psychiatric ResearchUNC Pembroke campus2/8/ :08 Journal of Psychiatric ResearchUNC Pembroke campus2/28/ :04 Journal of Psychiatric ResearchUNC Pembroke campus3/1/ :42 Good Example Bad Example

Vendor Statistics Statistics given by vendors where not useful. Only vendor such as JSTOR and Project Muse were willing to give a title by title break down of statistics. However they are both full text collections. Vendors lack interest in supplying info.

Bringing It All Together Comparing ILL requests, Journal Finder “not- hits” and reference requests. 41 titles appeared on 2 or more lists. These 41 titles will be given to faculty as suggestions for possible new editions. Three vendors published most of the titles requested (Sage, Haworth & Elsevier)

Outcome Already added five new journals to our collection. Provided evidence which led to a journal package subscription. Statistics supported some faculty requests and donations. Discovered trends among multi-miss journals i.e. same vendor, similar areas of study.

Other Positive Results Better understanding of student behaviors, with implications for library instruction. Better understanding of the collection as a whole. Especially lack of significant publishers such as Sage and Elsevier. Implications for web page design/clarification.

Drawbacks Tedious Can not determine if depth of coverage for existing subscriptions is sufficient. –ILL request could be for older issues –Journal Finder will not display a “no-hit” for titles with any full text coverage. Hard to determine bad searches from real journals.

What Does The Future Hold? Follow same procedure next year, look for recurring titles. Contact vendors concerning statistics Develop a streamlined process to review lists.