Killing Two Birds with One Stone: Data-driven Storage Selection and Collection Analysis
Journal of East Asian Libraries
Killing Two Birds with One Stone: Data-driven Storage Selection and Collection Analysis
0 University of Minnesota , USA
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Killing Two Birds with One Stone:
Data-driven Storage Selection and Collection Analysis
Yao Chen
University of Minnesota
Introduction
This article investigated how to use holding data, circulation and interlibrary loan (ILL)
statistics to analyze the East Asian collection at the University of Minnesota. Data from
multiple sources was divided along Library of Congress call number classification to help
explore what was collected, utilized, and what should be grown or de-emphasized. These
three sets of data are readily available in most libraries, and they can serve as a powerful
tool to help subject librarians to assess the collection in their subject fields. With these data,
a librarian can also make informed decisions about collection management, including remote
storage selection and budget reallocation.
Despite the fact that academic libraries have increased their acquisitions in electronic
formats in the recent years, they continue to face the problem of the continually growing
physical collections. This is especially true for East Asian collections, due to the fact that
many resources are available in print format only and librarians have been primarily
acquiring print collection in addition to non-ebook databases. For these reasons, the use of
storage facilities for library holdings to relieve space pressure has become a common
practice in the academic libraries, especially print-heavy collections, such as East Asian
collections. In Fall 2015, the East Asian library at the University of Minnesota experienced
severe space issues and materials had to be transferred to storage to make space for new
acquisitions. While it is very common to use circulation data to make storage selection
decisions, I also investigated ILL data, with the dual intent to make deselection decisions and
assess the current East Asian collection for potential improvements.
Literature Review
The Council on East Asian Libraries statistics data showed that from FY2010 to FY2014, the
percentage of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (CJK) budgets spent on electronic resources
slightly increased every year; however, CJK budgets were still primarily spent on
nonelectronic resources. On average, in FY2010, the percentage of budgets spent on
nonelectronic resources of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean collections were 80%, 90%, and 87%
respectively. In FY 2011, the numbers were 74% for Chinese, 91% for Japanese, and 86%
for Korean collections. In FY 2012, the numbers were 77% for Chinese, 92% for Japanese,
and 80% for Korean collections; in FY 2013, 76% for Chinese, 89% for Japanese, and 83%
for Korean collections; and in FY2014, 72% for Chinese, 88% for Japanese, and 80% for
Korean collections (as shown in figure 1).
In a study published in 2012, Yoon Jee Cho and Hyokyoung Yi surveyed Chinese, Japanese,
and Korean studies librarians about their e-book acquisition. The results revealed that
ebook acquisition equaled five to ten percent of the total budget for Chinese acquisition; close
to zero percent for Japanese acquisition (except for e-books available in a certain Japanese
database); and zero to three percent for Korean acquisition (2012, 38–40). These numbers
indicated that the East Asian collection in North America is still largely in print format.
Shelving space will be a lasting issue faced by East Asian libraries and collections.
Studies regarding storage selection have switched from personal experience based
guidelines to data-driven institutional decision-making. Circulation data has been widely
used for libraries to decide items, which need to be transferred to storage facilities. However,
as the findings of a survey given to 108 Association of Research Libraries university library
collection development officers indicated, some respondents considered circulation data
was not the most important factor in collection development; in-house use and ILL statistics
were also important
(Carrigan 1996, 435–436)
.
The use of both circulation and ILL data in collection development and analysis is not new.
As early as 1986, William
Aguilar (1986)
recommended using the readily available holding
data, circulation records, and ILL statistics to assess libraries’ collections. He suggested that
the relative use of the collection was more meaningful than the absolute use of the collection
and said “circulation should be considered vis-à-vis the corresponding holdings” (17). He
further stated that this relative use “takes on greater significance as refined by Mills,” as it
was multiplied by 100 percent and became the “percentage of expected use”
(Mills 1982, 6)
.
Similarly, Aguilar introduced “ratio of borrows to holdings” (20) to compare the percentage
of ILL transactions against the pe (...truncated)