Collection development is big business and how academic libraries decide to invest in content is radically changing. This is being driven as much by new approaches to organisational design, relationship management, and data insight in universities as by changes to business models and technology in scholarly publishing and the supply chain. Based on recent experience at Edinburgh, Manchester and Northumbria, this participatory session will explore new strategies for collection development, and specifically address challenges and opportunities faced by libraries that have moved or are transitioning from traditional subject librarian roles.

1. Collection development in a world without
‘subject librarians’
Laura Shanahan
Head of Collections Development & Access
University of Edinburgh
A perspective from Edinburgh

2. Drivers for change
Student Experience
Course Collections Programme
Value of investment
Materials budget allocation changes
New modes of access
E-book packages
New services
Competing pressures for Academic Support Librarians (ASLs)

3. Course Collections Programme (1)
• All ‘Essential’ and ‘Recommended’ reading acquired automatically using pre-set criteria
• Purchasing made out of single Course Collections Fund per College
• ASLs copied in when lists published, otherwise only contacted when there’s a problem
• Aims to address student feedback on ‘not enough copies’ – monitoring through
Edinburgh Student Experience Survey
• Analysing data over time to amend processes

4. Course Collections Programme (2)
There needs to be
more books for
my course
Edinburgh Student Experience Survey new question in 2015:
“I have been able to find my course reading list resources from the library”
• Overall = 73% (some as low as 56%)
• Humanities & Social Science = 73%
• Medicine & Vet Medicine = 81%
• Science & Engineering = 66%
• Target for Library-related satisfaction by 2020 = 93%
There are not enough
copies relative to the
number of people on
the course

5. 38% of book recommendations made
by Academic Support Librarians in 2014-15
(4,336 recommendations out of 11,105) – one
third for taught courses

6. Materials budget allocation changes (1)
• Each College has only:
– new & existing recurrent resources;
– non-recurrent research resources
– Course Collections fund
• Humanities & Social Science moving from 14 to 3 budget codes
• Removes micro-management of budgets by ASLs and School sub-committees (which
fails anyway)
• Budget spent to meet real requirements, and to deal with fluctuation in demand
between Schools

7. Materials budget allocation changes (2)
Fund Final expenditure
(14/15)
CHSS General 112%
Edinburgh College of Art 100%
School of Divinity 118%
Education 105%
Health in Social Science 70%
Law 98%
Law disbursement 63%
History, Classics & Archaeology 106%
Literatures, Languages & Cultures 91%
Business School 51%
Economics 60%
Philosophy, Psychology & Language Science 79%
Social & Political Science 104%
Context:
• Allocations within Schools based on historic model
• Available balance depends on commitment needed
for Central Online Resources Fund
• Some funds spent almost immediately, some slow to
spend
• End of financial year different Schools shore each
other up

8. Materials budget allocation changes (3)

9. E-book packages
1,501,370
1,383,637
1,216,982
1,059,837
4,893,644
5,232,553
6,349,541
6,929,881
1,339,782
1,878,335
3,138,601
4,844,754
0
1,000,000
2,000,000
3,000,000
4,000,000
5,000,000
6,000,000
7,000,000
8,000,000
2011-12 2012-13 2013-14 2014-15
Collection Usage 2011 to 2015
Print loans & renewals
E-journal article downloads
E-book section downloads
Student growth 14%
Print usage down 29%
E-journals usage up 42%
E-book provision up 28%
E-books usage up 262% !

10. Competing pressures for ASLs
• 12 FTE for 22 Schools and 35k students
• Required to produce monthly engagement reports per School
• Communicating on Research Data Management, Open
Access, Information Literacy, Heritage Collection
Development, Metadata Priorities, etc…

11. Challenges to Change
• Need better integration between systems
• Giving up old practice
• Acceptable pace for change (18 months for HSS)
• College / School variety, so ASLs must support
• Academic community not fully engaged, due to limited time; but students are feeding back
• Want to integrate e-reserve and ILL requests with acquisitions

12. Other new approaches
• Piloting systematic purchasing of books authored by Edinburgh academics
• Information taken from Pure Research Information Repository
• 184 books purchased for Humanities & Social Sciences (2015 onwards)
• Starting with full books only
• Buying two copies: one lending/electronic, one archival
• Lending copies to be submitted to REF as required

13. For us, a transition…

14. Laura Shanahan
Head of Collections Development & Access
University of Edinburgh
Laura.M.Shanahan@ed.ac.uk