When faced with multiple competing priorities for investment in library resources, there are many important aspects to consider. From student enrollment to prominence of programs, there are both data-driven and intangible factors to weigh. In addition, most library collections now focus on the immediate needs of students and researchers instead of collecting for posterity. This just-in-time versus just-in-case collection development mindset prioritizes different resource attributes and requires an often unfamiliar level of acquisitions flexibility.

1. What ARE we thinking?
Collections decisions in an
Academic Library
November 5, 2015
Perspectives from the librarian and vendor communities
Charleston Conference, 2015

2. Presenters
Linda Galloway, Syracuse University Libraries
Doug Morton, Elsevier
Shannon Pritting, SUNY Polytechnic Institute
Natasha Cooper, Syracuse University Libraries (moderator)

3. Collection Development Challenges
 Complexity
 E or P (electronic or print)
 Firm orders/Demand Driven Acquisitions/Patron Driven Acquisitions/Evidence-based
 Service or building a comprehensive collection (just in time/just in case)
 Many factors: access models; accessibility; licensing; preservation; system/consortia;
usability…
 Institutional needs (curriculum; research)
 Communications (externally and internally)

4. Details
 We welcome Q&A at the end of the session.
 Reading list and contact information will follow.

5. Large interdisciplinary
institution
Linda Galloway, STEM Collection Development and Analysis Librarian and Subject Librarian for Chemistry and Forensic Sciences,
Syracuse University Libraries

6. A note about our checklist…
 Intended to cover most situations and points to consider when adding textual or non-textual items
to your collection
 Not intended to be a point-by-point checklist for all resources
 If you think of something to add to the list, please speak up at the end
 For more detailed information, consult the reading list documents

7. About Syracuse University
 Large, diverse private institution
 20,000 FTE, 1200+ faculty, 3500+ staff
 Support undergrads to PhD students
 Highly ranked schools & colleges
 School of Information Studies (iSchool)
 S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications
 Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs
 Martin J. Whitman School of Management
 Programs range from performing arts to biomedical engineering
 Increasing emphasis on educating & providing services for veterans
 Possible new initiatives include medical school

8. Syracuse University Libraries
Opportunities
 Support wide range of programs & services
 Healthy collections budget with inflationary increases
 Librarians who are strong advocates for their
constituents
Challenges
 In the midst of rebuilding staffing levels
 Resource acquisition & maintenance workflows need
updating
 Difficult for us to keep up with management of
electronic resources

9. Considerations for adding new
resources
What are WE (@SU) thinking???

10. Big picture
 How does this fit in with previously acquired resources?
 Overlap analysis
 Similar “type” of resource owned/leased (e.g. data sets for analysis)
 How many students/faculty will this benefit?
 Relative importance of program benefitting from acquisition
 Who made the request?
 Some subjective ranking inevitable
 Current or new curricular need?
 Generally a just-in-case acquisition mindset

11. Access models
 How much use will this resource get? Can we rely on ILL??
 Usability of content
 Responsive design
 Unlimited simultaneous users
 Does the product comply with web accessibility guidelines (VPAT)
 Will patron-driven acquisition models work for this resource?

12. Content discovery
 Can we simply “turn this on” in our discovery systems (Summon,
WorldCat Discovery, Ebsco Discovery)
 MARC records freely available
 Can this content be discovered in Google Scholar?
 Abstracts of articles or first full page cannot be behind a pay wall
 Can the content be easily “turned off” when unsubscribed?
 Problem with records loaded for DDA trial, which then needed to be removed

13. Decision support data
Journals
 Interlibrary loan requests for unsubscribed
content
 Turnaway data – generally provided by
vendor
 Overlap analysis – number of unique titles in
a ejournal package
 Purchase or lease of backfiles?
 COUNTER compliant usage data, or vendor-
supplied usage
Books
 Do ebooks overlap with owned print books?
 Credits available for previously purchased
content?
 Aggregator pkgs vs. publisher pkgs vs.
individual title purchases
 Lease or own content?
 COUNTER compliant usage data, or vendor-
supplied usage

14. Acquisition considerations
 Check consortial pricing
 Unique or sub-population FTE requests from vendors are often difficult to
obtain
 In-library access available to non-affiliated users
 Read licenses carefully and make/request modifications to fulfill your
institution’s needs
 Smooth setup with minimal ongoing monitoring

15. And, it would be nice if…
 Availability of in-depth, specialized research options, such as text mining –
at no charge
 Hybrid OA journals – if we subscribe & author pays article processing
charge (APC) to make article OA, provide monetary credit to institution
 Offer to waive a certain percent, or a certain number of, APC for
subscribing institutions
 Alumni access (not that important to us)

16. Small, focused institution
Shannon Pritting, Library Director, SUNY Polytechnic Institute

17. About SUNY Poly
 Roughly 2,100 FTE
 Roughly 900 Research Scientists; 175
Faculty
 Diverse Faculty: some focusing on
teaching; others on research
 Small Phd Programs, Master’s programs,
and 4-year degrees
 Completely online degrees and multiple
sites
 Public-Private partnership and university-
driven research enterprise.
 #1 in Nation in R and D expenditures funded
by businesses, FY 2013

18. SUNY Poly’s Library
 Small staff
 Supporting undergraduates and
high-level researchers.
 Major increases in investment
in library in past two years.
Budget has been doubling each
year past two years.
 Reliant heavily on support of
and cooperation with SUNY
network.

19. What SUNY Poly looks for in Vendor
Relationship
 Easy in and easy out—ease of subscription and ease of move to different
model or package.
 Are you listening?
 We’re pretty unique, and is the vendor listening to understand what will work best for
us?
 Big packages are good too.
 No worries about duplicating content, so subscription service models for backfiles and
other content help to catch up.

20. Moving Forward
 SUNY Poly embodies the public-private partnership model.
 Baseline “just in case” budgets isn’t our model.
 Unless needed for accreditation, resource funding is negotiated
internally
 All major subscriptions must be justified
 Requires constant updating and surveying of service and
access models.
 Work to educate faculty and administration on costs as the money
will often be coming directly from them.
 Vendor relationships are crucial as each year, we’ll need to
revisit to make sure we’re getting the best return on investment.
 Discussion of functioning more like a special library, charging
back departments for services and content.

21. Demonstrating Value and the Bottom Line
 Curricular or success stories are good and carry some weight.
 Presenting best value for access to content is most important, which
makes accurate usage data and openness about other models for access
key to keeping content available.
 Most faculty understand need to keep costs down, so are open to service
models requiring requesting articles and not having everything instantly
full-text.

22. Public-Private Means Embedding is
Difficult
 Subject librarianship and working closely with researchers to understand
research is difficult, if not impossible.
 Much of research is highly specialized, cutting edge, and crosses
disciplines.
 Large research staff don’t function programmatically like academics so
are harder to predict needs.
 Confidentiality concerns with private partnerships make discussions about
research problematic.

23. Patron Profiling: Moving Past One Big
Discovery
 Library shows value by providing the easiest and most cost-efficient delivery of content.
 Article on demand models can be costly, and we need to control who can get content.
 Discovery service profiles (Poly uses EDS) is best way to provide only the content
designated for the specific group as exposing all content in discovery is too costly.
 Profiles can be very narrow or broad, depending on who you are.

24. Vendor perspective
Douglas Morton, Account Manager, Elsevier

25. Meeting the needs of diverse institutions
 Understand available subscription / acquisition models
 Evaluate available consortium deals
 Arrange and participate in training on vendor platforms
 Bring institutional activity into focus

26. CD considerations from the vendor POV
 Full-text usage data
 Turnaway data
 Citation data
 Publication data
 Physical space data

27. CD considerations from the vendor POV
- 5,000 10,000 15,000 20,000 25,000 30,000 35,000 40,000
Health Sciences
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
Immunology and Microbiology
Neuroscience
Nursing and Health Professions
Chemistry
Psychology
Physics and Astronomy
Social Sciences
Agricultural and Biological Sciences
Engineering
Computer Science
Veterinary Science and Veterinary Medicine
Materials Science
Chemical Engineering
Environmental Science
Mathematics
Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutical Science
Decision Sciences
Business, Management and Accounting
Economics, Econometrics and Finance
Earth and Planetary Sciences
Energy

28. CD considerations from the vendor POV

29. CD considerations from the vendor POV

30. CD considerations from the vendor POV

31. Communicating with vendors
 Communicate through your primary rep
 Schedule specific time for calls
 Keep vendors apprised of current or upcoming projects, initiatives and pitfalls
 Get to know the account team

32. What vendors want librarians to know
 We want to meet your needs, and need your help to do that
 We can provide value beyond just the products we sell
 Relationships and trust are mutually beneficial

33. Questions?
 Natasha Cooper, Syracuse University Libraries, nacoop01@syr.edu
 Linda Galloway, Syracuse University Libraries, galloway@syr.edu
 Doug Morton, Elsevier
 Shannon Pritting, SUNY Polytechnic Institute

34. Reading list
Anderson, E. (2014). Electronic resource management systems: a workflow approach. ALA TechSource:
Chicago.
Dames, K. M., Gwilt, R. B., Warren, S. A., & Carrier, T. C. (2015). Collections and Space: An Update on
Syracuse University Libraries’ Journals Migration Project. Syracuse University Libraries. Retrieved from
http://library.syr.edu/about/PDF/20150406-journalswhite.pdf
Goedeken, E. A., & Lawson, K. (2015). The Past, Present, and Future of Demand-Driven Acquisitions in
Academic Libraries. College & Research Libraries, 76(2), 205–221. http://doi.org/10.5860/crl.76.2.205
Hosburgh, N. (2014). Managing the Electronic Resources Lifecycle: Creating a Comprehensive Checklist
Using Techniques for Electronic Resource Management (TERMS). The Serials Librarian, 66(1-4), 212–219.
http://doi.org/10.1080/0361526X.2014.880028
Strader, R., Roth, A., Boissy, B., & Robertson, W. (2006). A Collaborative Checklist for E-Journal Access.
The Serials Librarian, 50(3-4), 235–242. http://doi.org/10.1300/J123v50n03_05
Sutton, S. (2013). A Model for Electronic Resources Value Assessment. The Serials Librarian, 64(1-4), 245–
253. http://doi.org/10.1080/0361526X.2013.760417
TERMS: Techniques for Electronic Resource Management. (n.d.). Retrieved November 2, 2015, from
https://library3.hud.ac.uk/blogs/terms/