Y.Pancheshnikov, ACRL, 2003 Course-Centered Collection Evaluation in the Agricultural Sciences for University Instructional Program Reviews Yelena Pancheshnikov University of Saskatchewan Library CANADA

Y.Pancheshnikov, ACRL, 2003 Outline of the presentation 1. Goals and objectives of collection evaluation for instructional program reviews 2. Methods of collection evaluation 2.1. General approach 2.2. Evaluating the collection of monographs 2.3. Evaluating the collection of serials 3. Discussion of the results and conclusions

Y.Pancheshnikov, ACRL, Goals and objectives Instructional program reviews are frequently occurring reasons for collection evaluation. The general goal of these evaluations is to assess the adequacy of library materials to the needs of courses offered within a program and to determine the ability of the library to support teaching and related research.

Y.Pancheshnikov, ACRL, General approach, cont. More specific objectives are: To compare different courses in terms of their support by library materials: to identify the best and the worst supported courses; to identify courses that require additional acquisitions of library materials To identify the type of library support that is needed: material types, specific titles, services that facilitate the use of library resources

Y.Pancheshnikov, ACRL, Methods of collection evaluation: 2.1. general approach The approach we developed was: Course-centered: the evaluation was done separately for individual courses Article-specific for the collection of periodicals Comparative: based on comparison with the largest world collections of agricultural materials Quantitative: based on counts of items in the compared collections Subject based: based on the subject analysis of the collection

Y.Pancheshnikov, ACRL, Evaluating the collection of monographs On the basis of the description provided in the University Calendar every course taught within every program was assigned one or more LC Subject Headings that reflected the major groups of topics taught in the course.

Y.Pancheshnikov, ACRL, Evaluating the collection of monographs, cont. Searches by the assigned Subject Headings were done on the U of S Library catalogue and on the NAL catalogue for the total number of monographs and the number of monographs published after The percentage of the U of S Library holdings from NAL holdings calculated for individual courses for the entire collection and for the collection of the last 10 years was used as a measurement of the size of the U of S collection of monographs.

Y.Pancheshnikov, ACRL, Evaluating the collection of monographs, cont Courses were grouped, ranked and compared by the size of the entire supporting collection (Table 1) and by the size of the collection of the last 10 years (Table 2) in the following way: 29% and less – collection requires improvement 30%- 49% average collection 50% and more – good collection

Y.Pancheshnikov, ACRL, 2003

2.3. Evaluating the collection of periodical literature The major criteria for evaluating the collection of periodical literature was the availability of journal articles relevant to individual courses.

Y.Pancheshnikov, ACRL, Evaluating the collection of periodical literature, cont On the basis of the description of courses provided in the University Calendar the content of every course was described with one or more descriptors from the CAB Abstracts thesaurus Searches by these descriptors were done on CAB Abstracts for journal articles published during one last year The results of searches were compared with local holdings, or online accessibility of the article

Y.Pancheshnikov, ACRL, Evaluating the collection of periodical literature, cont The measurement of the size of the U of S collection of serials was the percentage of articles pertaining to individual courses available directly to the U of S library users from the total number of articles retrieved from CAB Abstracts

Y.Pancheshnikov, ACRL, Evaluating the collection of periodical literature, cont Courses were grouped, ranked and compared by the percentage of the directly available journal articles in the following way: 29% and less – collection requires improvement 30%- 49% average collection 50% and more – good collection Table 3 illustrates courses taught in the plant science program.

Y.Pancheshnikov, ACRL, 2003

3. Discussion of the results and conclusions The described approach to collection evaluation for instructional program reviews links collections to teaching and provides results that can be used as practical tools for further collection development. The main outcome of a course-centered approach is the ranking of courses by the size of the supporting collection. Along with its obvious value for further selection of materials it provides content for collaborating with faculty members.

Y.Pancheshnikov, ACRL, Discussion of the results and conclusions, cont An evaluation of the book collection based on subject headings seems more adequate to the way library materials are accessed by library patrons, than an evaluation based on the number of books within certain ranges of call numbers.

Y.Pancheshnikov, ACRL, Discussion of the results and conclusions, cont A more commonly used call number approach often leads to the loss of resources covering multiple subjects and gives an impression that some sections of the collection are weaker than they really are. A serious technical advantage of a call number based approach is the availability of collection assessment software, like OCLC ACAS, that runs comparative counts on the collections by the range of call numbers and is a major labor saving tool.

Y.Pancheshnikov, ACRL, Discussion of the results and conclusions, cont The evaluation of the collection of serials based on the assessment of the number of available articles reflects the true needs of journal users, who read articles and not journals. It is also a more logical approach in the context of the rapid proliferation of full-text electronic resources and direct linking from all of the major indexes to the full-text of articles that bypasses the general journal web page.

Y.Pancheshnikov, ACRL, Discussion of the results and conclusions, cont An additional valuable outcome of collection evaluation done by examining all of the course-related materials is that it inevitably leads to a thorough knowledge of both the teaching system and the collection, which is always extremely beneficial for subject librarians.

Y.Pancheshnikov, ACRL, Discussion of the results and conclusions, cont Ideally a comprehensive analysis of library resources should include different approaches. The method we developed and applied can be improved in the future by the assessment of the use of the materials, as well as by expert opinions