Presentation at the NASIG (North American Serials Interest Group) Conference in Pittsburgh, PA, June 7, 2019.

1. Connections of Evidence:
Using Best Practices of Assessment in
an Ongoing Serials Analysis Project
NASIG Conference, June 7, 2019
Cynthia Kane
Professor / Instruction and Assessment Librarian
Emporia State University
Libraries and Archives
Emporia, KS
ckane1@emporia.edu

2. A Little Information about Emporia State University!
▪ Founded in 1863
▪ Public university, part of the Kansas Board
of Regents System (with five other Kansas
universities)
▪ Four colleges/schools:
▪ College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
▪ School of Business
▪ The Teachers College
▪ School of Library and Information Management
(accredited by the American Library
Association)

3. Realities of Our Student Population
As of Fall 2018:
▪ 5796 students (headcount)
▪ 3569: Undergraduate
▪ 2227: Graduate
▪ 3809 students were classified as “on-campus” (66%)
▪ 1987 students were classified as “off-campus” (34%)
Majors with Highest Number of Declared Students:
UNDERGRADUATE: GRADUATE:
Elementary Education Library Science
Business Administration Health and Physical Education
Biology Curriculum and Instruction
Psychology Special Education
Nursing Mathematics
Accounting Business Administration

4. ESU’s Distance Education Programs:
Online and Off CampusUNDERGRADUATE DISTANCE PROGRAMS
Bachelor of Science, Business Administration (online – degree completion)
Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies (online)
Elementary Education (off campus, Johnson County Community College; Kansas City Kansas Community College; Butler Community
College – El Dorado and Andover)
GRADUATE DISTANCE PROGRAMS
Accountancy (online) Informatics (online)
Business Administration (online) Instructional Design and Technology (online)
Curriculum and Instruction (online and off campus) Library and Information Management (hybrid; both MLS and Ph.D)
Early Childhood Unified (online) Mathematics (online)
Educational Administration (online) Physical Sciences/Earth Sciences (online)
Elementary Education (online) Special Education (online)
English (online) Teaching (online)
Health, Physical Education, and Recreation (online) TESOL (online)
History (online)

5. Correlations?
• The majors with the HIGHEST numbers of declared students match
most of the graduate distance education offerings
• Undergraduate majors, for the most part, tend to be focused upon
programs that are PRIMARILY on campus
• HOWEVER:
• Our undergraduate and graduate students tend to have part-time
or full-time jobs
• Library ethnographic study: Initial results indicate that the use of
the physical library building is for group and individual study – to
be alone but not alone!
• Do students come to the library building to use print resources?
• What about off-campus students and distance education students?

6. Realities of Budgeting for Serials (AKA the Serials Crisis)
FY16:
Library Electronic Databases $225,943.00
Model Library: $113,531.00
Library Enhancements: $77,180.00
FY17:
Library Electronic Databases $225,943.00
Model Library: $88,531.00
Library Enhancements: $52,180.00
FY18
Library Electronic Databases $334,654.00
Model Library: $52,000.00

7. Case Study #1: Elsevier and the University of California
System
Open Statement from University of California (20 Mar. 2019; revised 25 Apr. 2019):
“The University of California has taken a firm stand on both open access to publicly funded
research and fiscal responsibility by deciding not to renew its journal subscriptions with
Elsevier, the world’s largest scientific publisher.”
▪ Sticking points for negotiations:
▪ Elsevier proposals raised subscription costs for periodicals while restricting open access for UC-
authored research articles;
▪ Proposals required UC to forgo perpetual access to a significant number of Elsevier journals;
▪ Elsevier’s terms would have prevented open access publishing in some high-profile Elsevier journals
Source: “Open Statement: Why UC terminated journal negotiations with Elsevier”,
https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-at-uc/publisher-negotiations/uc-and-
elsevier/

8. Case Study #2: University of Iowa Libraries
UI Libraries will cancel over 800 journal, e-book, and database subscriptions over the rest of
this academic year, with a potential of approximately $600,000 in savings.
Their approach:
▪ Meeting with key people and identifying as much as possible the amount of money spent
on subscriptions by academic department
▪ Proposing percentages to cut by department “determined by the number of journal and
database titles subscribed to by discipline, the funding allocated to each, and how many
of those titles were ineligible for cancellation because they were part of multi-year
commitments or packages.”
▪ Transparency! Librarians communicated with faculty and students about titles used and
not used, costs, and other access points through ILL or other ways.
Source: “University of Iowa Cancels $600K in Subscriptions”, Library Journal, 23 May 2019:
https://www.libraryjournal.com/?detailStory=university-of-iowa-cancels-600k-in-
subscriptions&fbclid=IwAR3mPNrXRtG8rl_Ift89iPFwDB_3vj4_323PBzi3SzgftWtbCnrzpsyQ3rQ

9. Trickle-Down Effects: Emporia State University Libraries
and Archives
Our current serials include:
▪ Individual online serials – EBSCO
▪ Individual print and print+online serials –
WT Cox
▪ ScienceDirect e-serials package – Elsevier
▪ E-serials package – Taylor and Francis
(Library and Information Sciences
package)
▪ E-serials package – American Chemical
Society
▪ Newsbank – KS Newspapers (special
package for Regents Libraries Database
Consortium)

10. Considerations of Serials Access: ESU
▪ Our students and faculty increasingly do not utilize print serials located in the library
▪ Patron culture: Online databases with full text raise expectations accordingly that every article
WILL be in full text (or linked to FT in another resource)
▪ Related: How well do these “linkages” work in certain databases/vendors?
▪ Discovery layers (example: EBSCO Discovery Service, or EDS): A general search for
information in a library’s webpage will retrieve records for books, articles, and other sources that
may or may not be immediately available in print or online
▪ ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education: “Searching as Strategic
Exploration”
▪ KNOWLEDGE PRACTICES
▪ “identify interested parties, such as scholars, organizations, governments, and industries, who might produce information about
a topic and then determine how to access that information”
▪ DISPOSITIONS
▪ “exhibit mental flexibility and creativity” and “persist in the face of search challenges, and know when they have enough
information to complete the information task”

11. Themes of Assessment (To Be Applied in Various Projects)
▪ Assessment is a natural, scholarly act that
can bring important benefits.
▪ Assessment is composed of three steps:
goals, information, action.
▪ The end of assessment is action.
▪ Assessment involves communicating
across cultures, within and outside the
institution.
▪ You need not only individual data-
collecting, but systems for feeding data
into decision-making.
▪ Build on what you’re already doing.
Source: Walvoord, Barbara. Assessment: Clear and Simple.

12. Serials Analysis at William Allen White Library
▪ Last in-depth review of print and online serials was in
the Spring 2007 semester
▪ 2014-Spring 2016: No weeding/deselection of print
OR online materials
▪ Fall 2016: New Dean for the Libraries and Archives
▪ Asked the ULA faculty to perform a deep analysis of our
EBSCO print and online serials
▪ Print+online, plus online-only: Focus upon CPU (cost per
use, or cost per full-text retrieval)
▪ Print only: Were these serials available online only? Did
faculty and students know about the print availability in the
library?
▪ ULA faculty are academic department liaisons: What did
we know about changing curriculum and research needs
in our departments?

13. How Did We Approach This Project?
Our business manager and I collaborated in late summer 2016 to:
▪ Download a spreadsheet of our current EBSCO serials subscriptions
▪ Check each title for full-text coverage overlaps in the library’s subscription-based databases
▪ NOTE: The Kansas State Library offers a database package to all Kansas residents based upon IP
range. We opted not to include these databases because of potential negotiation changes from year to
year
▪ For print+online and online-only, consult CY15 usage statistics (in COUNTER4, Journal
Report 1: Number of Successful Full-Text Article Requests by Month and Journal)
▪ CY15 used because of the calendar year renewal of our EBSCO subscriptions
▪ Full-text article requests/retrievals were calculated with each CY15 serial subscription cost
through EBSCO for a result of cost per use/full text retrieval
▪ We used a benchmark of $25 to $30 per FT retrieval to help determine if an online serial
should be kept or cancelled (considering access through ILL or Reprints Desk)

14. Sharing with ULA Faculty
I imported our data into a Google spreadsheet to be shared (View Only) with the ULA faculty
in late Fall 2016.
Columns in the spreadsheet included:
▪ Serial title (individual serials)
▪ Publisher packages/association packages (included serial titles were listed under each
package)
▪ Format (print; print+online; online only)
▪ Subscription database access (for overlaps)
▪ Title costs – 2015 and 2016
▪ Title cost – 2017 (where available)
▪ Total FT retrievals for online titles
▪ Cost per FT retrieval (2015 and January – September 2016; prorated costs)

15. Results of First Serials Review
▪ Opened additional conversations with academic departments:
▪ Were they aware of serials in their subject areas?
▪ What research projects were students being asked to complete? Did those projects include use of
academic, peer-reviewed journals?
▪ Were their students on-campus or off-campus?
▪ What publishing expectations existed for tenure/promotion?
▪ Some departments were fine with cancelling titles with high FT retrieval costs that were
simultaneously available in subscription databases with no or few embargos
▪ A number of titles were identified as overlapping in full text in databases, with 12- to 18-
month embargos
▪ Other departments asked for more time to incorporate serials into curriculum and research
▪ Best practices: Transparency was key! Access to core journals would NOT be lost.

16. Challenges in Compiling Data!
▪ Ensuring that ALL publishers’ sites were checked for
usage statistics!
▪ We had not established a method for keeping track of
any possible use of print-only serials
▪ Online serials titles with single-user sign-on (password)
did not necessarily have usage statistics available
▪ Our business manager and I found several broken links
to some online serials titles – potential as a result to
skew the usage statistics for FT retrievals
▪ 2016 and 2017: Library was still using the serials manager
function of WorldCat WMS for “Journals” online access
▪ Summer 2018: Switched to III/Sierra and to BrowZine for
online serials

17. Comparisons: 2016 - 2019
Calendar
Year
Number of EBSCO
titles
Number of titles
cancelled
Notes
CY 2016 352 127 (36%) Cancelled for CY 2017
CY 2017 234 65 (28%) Cancelled for CY 2018
CY 2018 168 32 (19%) Cancelled for CY 2019
CY 2019 83 Review in progress 72 EBSCO titles moved to WT Cox for CY 2019 (155 subscribed titles in total)
FOLLOW-UP:
American Chemical Society e-journals package and ScienceDirect package (Elsevier): Similar comparisons and renegotiations
LIS e-journals are by FAR the most heavily used, followed closely by art therapy e-journals -- reflecting online and distance education
graduate student populations!
Renegotiation with Taylor and Francis for 2019 -- Library and Information Sciences e-journals package

18. Thank you!
Questions?
Cynthia Kane
Professor / Instruction and Assessment Librarian
Emporia State University
Libraries and Archives
ckane1@emporia.edu