It’s Not Just About Weeding Using Collaborative Collection Analysis to Develop Consortial Collections Charleston Conference 2014 Leslie O’Brien Genya O’Gara Anne C. Osterman

What is the Virtual Library of Virginia (VIVA)? 72 academic libraries (39 public, 32 private, Library of Virginia), including doctorals, four years, two years, and specialized institutions. Central funding provided by the Commonwealth of Virginia, additional cost-sharing by members. Grounded in the coordinated collection development of online resources and an extensive resource sharing program.

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Introduction and Background Virtual Library of Virginia VIVA Steering Committee Collections Committee Monographic Collection Analysis Task Force

Collection Development was one of the Project Goals: ●Pilot a coordinated, consortial approach to collection assessment ●Use the data and analysis to inform future, collaborative collection development ●Identify scarcely-held titles in need of protection ●Begin a discussion about the possibility of reducing unnecessary duplication and saving local space through strategic weeding ●Provide remediated and enhanced records back to the participating schools

Task Force Proposal Proposal to Collections Committee, approved by Steering Committee Pilot group 12 libraries Private & public, 2 year & 4 year Sustainable Collection Services selected to analyze data 6 million records

All circulating print monographs English language only Main library (no law libraries, medical libraries, etc.) LC classification only Included in the Analysis

Collection Development Areas ●Widely Held and Highly/Recently Circulated Books ●Print Book Shelf Life ●Comparison of Print and Electronic Usage Patterns ●Common Themes and Local Disciplinary Strengths

Looking for Intersections Top publishers Highly circulated titles Widely held titles

Examining Widely Held/Highly Circulated Books Defined as: ●held by 10 or more VIVA libraries ●10 or more recorded uses ●last charge date after 2007 Resulted in a list of just over 175,000 books.

Converting Widely Held Print to Ebooks? ProQuest’s Title Matching Fast service compared widely held print to their ebook offerings ●identified a few key publishers ●gave options and basic pricing for multiple options of ebook access The ISBNs were also matched to a standardized list of publishers using an in-house approach ●matched all books to publishers

Title Count By Publisher

Conducted Survey of Collection Development Contacts Satisfaction with current e-book collections Interest in acquiring from particular publishers Preferences for acquisition models

Holdings and Usage for Top Publishers

Holding and Usage for Top Publishers

Practical Application in Negotiations This data aided a discussion and negotiation with a publisher about a shared purchase because it could show how many copies have historically been held by all of VIVA in print

Examining Shelf Life Could be used to inform lease vs. purchase of e-books Average number of years between publication year and last charge date, where Publication year >= 1980 Record add date >= 1990 Last charge date not null Focused on three LC classes H, Social Sciences N, Fine Arts Q, Science

Examining shelf life

Conclusions about Shelf Life This shelf life approach could be useful in informing future acquisition model decisions In a demand driven acquisition e-book program, different trigger-to-purchase levels could be set for different subjects As the publisher-based discussions progress, the subjects areas that a publisher is strongest in could inform a lease vs. purchase decision

Comparison of Print and E Usage Focused on three STEM-H publishers acquired recently in e-book format by the consortium Matched up print holdings from collection analysis to shared e-holdings using the ISBN Represented a total of around 800 titles held in both e and print format within VIVA

Comparison of Print and E Usage

Conclusions about Print and E Usage This could show user preferences for a given format in a given discipline It might inform future directions for purchasing e-books

Looking for Local Strengths What does the subject distribution of the whole collection look like distributed across the pilot libraries? What do our uniquely held titles tell us about our collections?

Results – Subject Distribution Classes where the percent distribution of total collections is widely (more evenly) shared B – Philosophy, Psychology, Religion C – Auxiliary Sciences of History (General) D – World History (except American History) E – American History F – Local History of US & British, Dutch, French, & Latin America G – Geography, Anthropology, Recreation H – Social Sciences J – Political Science L – Education M – Music N – Fine Arts U – Military Science

Results – Subject Distribution Classes where the distribution of total collections is not as widely (less evenly) shared A – General Works P – Language and Literature Q – Science R – Medicine S – Agriculture T – Technology V – Naval Science Z – Bibliography, Library Science

Distribution is Key! Pilot libraries had wide distribution of subject areas across the state! Distribution of collection depth was the second piece of the puzzle.

Results – Local Strengths UVA has all the unique stuff (just kidding – but they have a lot)!

Results – Local Strengths Wide ranging examples of institutions with high percentages of unique titles by LC class! If unique titles is an indicator of collection depth, this was great news for consortial collection development.

Results – Local Strengths

Consortial confidence in building on existing subject strengths Potential for formal collection development on behalf of other institutions

Progression of Collection Development Discussion Three recommendations were approved by the Steering Committee: ●Collaborative retention of widely-held monographs ●Establish a recommended threshold for VIVA holdings as new purchases ●Collaborative publisher-based e-book acquisition

Recommendation 1: Collaborative retention of widely-held monographs ●Initial result of the project led to an Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for unique and rare titles ●72,000 unique titles within circulating collections of VIVA pilot libraries, and held by less than 10 libraries in the United States ●Extend the project to include an MOU for widely-held monographs ●Allows for safe de-duplication, could incorporate subject strengths for retention copies ●Model with no shelf verification or catalog tagging – holdings are simply divided into “safe to weed” and “not safe to weed”

Recommendation 2: Establish a recommended threshold for VIVA holdings as new purchases ●Purchase monographs in consultation with one another ●Prevent future duplication ●Investigate common acquisition system and shared discovery layer ●Enable a cross-consortium view for collection development

Recommendation 3: Collaborative Publisher-Based E-book Acquisition ●Strong patterns, coupled with surveys, led to the identification of key-publishers ●Currently held titles and circulation patterns inform negotiations moving forward

Future: ●Implementation of recommendations over this next year ●Issues! Data freshness Expanding the data set beyond pilot libraries Costs ●Path forward for collaborative collecting

Questions?