1. Library Collection Assessment Project at the American College of Thessaloniki in 2006 Karen Bohrer AMICAL 2008 Conference The American University in Bulgaria

2. Why we did it  Major changes in academic program (2004)  New collection development policy (2005)  No analysis done since the Bissell Library came into existence (2002)  Quantitative assessment measures needed

3. What we did “Testing”  Divided book collection by academic division among library assistants  Staff, with help from faculty, identified 55 subjects  Obtained ranked bibliographies or created random lists from OCLC—40 books for each subject and 10 in each level: minimal, basic, study, research  Checked lists against our library’s OPAC to determine percentages of titles owned by level

4. What we did “Comparing”  Chose 3 AMICAL institutions of similar size and with similar academic programs-AUBG, AUP, FC  Collected total numbers of books from their OPACs in the 55 subject areas  Compared total item counts with ACT

5. What we did “Evaluating”  Using ACT’s course catalog and course syllabi, determined number of courses for each of the 55 tested areas  Compiled data: test results for levels, comparative item counts with others  Considered e-resources available  Conferred with faculty on results  Identified areas for collection development  Wrote a report

6. What we learned & other benefits  Brief tests don’t work so well with very small, young collections but they are still useful  Some quantitative measures are better than none—tests together with benchmarking provided these measures  Library staff learned more about the collection and more about ACT’s academic programs  Faculty members got involved and learned alot about the library  Relationships between library staff and faculty and library staff and senior administration were strengthened

7. Before you try this at home, read these!  Beals, J., & Gilmour, R. (2007). Assessing collections using brief tests and WorldCat Collection Analysis. Collection Building, 26(4), 104-107.  Lesniaski, D. (2004). Evaluating Collections: A Discussion and Extension of Brief Tests of Collection Strength. College & Undergraduate Libraries, 11(1), 11-25.  White, Howard D. (2008). Better than brief tests: Coverage power tests of collection strength. College and Research Libraries, 69(2), 155-174.