The Harmony of Peers1 The Harmony of Peers - Mining Peer Selection Patterns to Improve Consortial Engineering Collections Orion Pozo – NCSU Libraries Engineering Libraries Division Poster Session ASEE Annual Meeting, Portland OR Monday, June 13, 2005 This presentation will probably involve audience discussion, which will create action items. Use PowerPoint to keep track of these action items during your presentation In Slide Show, click on the right mouse button Select “Meeting Minder” Select the “Action Items” tab Type in action items as they come up Click OK to dismiss this box This will automatically create an Action Item slide at the end of your presentation with your points entered.

The Harmony of Peers2 Summary Triangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN) is a consortium of libraries at four North Carolina universities TRLN shares a common book vendor, YBP Library Services YBP provides Consortial & Peer Reports Goal: –Use Consortium and Peer Data to Increase quality and quantity of titles available to the consortium

The Harmony of Peers3 The Triangle Research Libraries Network: North Carolina State University University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Duke University North Carolina Central University

The Harmony of Peers4 Peer Institutions* Hong Kong Polytechnic Univ RMIT Monash University Univ of Cincinnati Iowa State Univ MIT Penn State Univ Purdue Univ Massey Univ Chinese Univ of Hong Kong Cornell Univ Stanford Univ Ohio State Univ UC San Diego Hong Kong Univ of Sci & Tech Carnegie Mellon Univ Univ of Technology, Sydney Clemson Univ Cal State Poly Univ, Pomona Rensselaer Polytech Inst Univ of Wisconsin, Madison Univ of Calgary Duke Univ * Peers were chosen based on the number of book selections in YBP’s Gobi2 database in the subjects of technology and computer science

The Harmony of Peers5 Goals - -Increase quality of titles available to the consortium -Reduce duplication of titles in the consortium Methodology - –For use Consortial Reports to reduce duplication –At the same time use Peer Reports to identify quality titles not in consortium –Compare the selection of duplicates and unique titles in the Consortium from and

The Harmony of Peers6 Project Outline: At one TRLN institution Use Consortial Reports to reduce duplication & identify titles not held Use Peer Reports to identify quality books not held Compare Consortial reports with Peer reports to purchase quality items not in the consortium Compare duplication and number of titles for (before Peer Reports) and (after Peer Reports)

The Harmony of Peers7 Details Limited to: –Books ordered from one vendor –Subjects: Computer Science (QA75-77) Engineering & Technology (T-TX) –Only two years of data available from vendor –One library (other consortial libraries purchased as always)

The Harmony of Peers8 YBP Consortial Report Form

The Harmony of Peers9 Sample YBP Record GobiTween shows slips were sent to 4 Consortium Libraries PeerGroup shows 10 Peer Libraries Selected this title

The Harmony of Peers10 Peer Activity Data for Single Record Lists 10 Libraries that Selected this Book

The Harmony of Peers11 Number of Titles Purchased From to TRLN Consortium purchasing of books from this vendor in these subject areas decreased 23% Number of books purchased decreased from 5,357 to 4,122

The Harmony of Peers12 Number of Libraries Selecting Titles While the number of books went down 23%, the number of titles was down only 18% Number of titles held by a single library in the Consortium went up 7.8% Almost 200 more titles were purchased using this methodology than would have been bought before it was available

The Harmony of Peers13 Conclusions Consortial Reports can be used effectively to reduce duplication in book selection within a consortium Peer Selection Data can be effectively used to find high quality materials that are not owned by consortium members Consortial and Peer data can be used harmoniously to build richer collections

The Harmony of Peers14 Recommendations for future studies Improvements in YBP’s Gobi2 database to allow sorting by and exporting the number of Peers selecting items would help data mining Cooperative use of this methodology by multiple members of a consortium should enhance desirable outcomes Replicating this study with multiple selectors in larger consortia