Using Document Delivery Data for Selecting Medical Titles in a Large STM Library 9th ILDS Conference Tallinn, Estonia Presented by: Michael Ireland, A/Director CISTI Information Access and Delivery Directorate

2 About CISTI

3 Making collection decisions based on usage More recent collection studies on ILL/Document Delivery usage done using monograph data Few studies looked both at serial usage AND serial gaps using ILL data as this study did.

CISTI Collection Review - Usage Study Key goals: –Assess CISTI’s serial collection strengths and weaknesses given recent budget constraints –Assess client need based on usage Starting assumptions: –Collection met the core STM needs of clients –Emerging gaps developing in medical and business literature

5 Scope Analyzed usage of current serials using Document Delivery order data Analyzed unfilled serial orders for reason of “not held “

6 Current serials analysis Gathered subject and bibliographic information on 8,666 serial titles Gathered usage data on these titles based: –sample of 309,748 orders placed in 2003 –usage of the 3 main user groups (NRC staff, Canadians, international clients)

7 Findings – Titles by Subject

8 Findings – Filled orders by subject and user group

9 Collection Gap Analysis Traditional ILL study of unfilled orders cancelled for reason of “not held “ Sample of 6,171 orders of top unfilled 318 serial titles, those with >10 hits from 2003 to 2004 Gathered subject, bibliographic and cost information on the 318 titles

10 Findings – "Not Held" orders by subject and user group

11 Client validation to action Groups telling CISTI there were collection gaps : –Canadian health library community –National Library of Medicine –NRC staff Closing the gap –135 more medical and health serial titles purchased –Collection Policy changed to allow for more medical and business literature

12 Best practices Goals met and assumptions validated Unique study successfully evaluated both collection strengths and weaknesses Balancing client need with subject depth Reusable method of evaluating the collection

13 Questions?

14 Contacts Michael Ireland Beverly (Bev) Brown, CISTI Website