Killing Two Birds with One Stone: Data-driven Storage Selection and Collection Analysis

Journal of East Asian Libraries, Oct 2016

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.

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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 Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/jeal BYU ScholarsArchive Citation 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)


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Yao Chen. Killing Two Birds with One Stone: Data-driven Storage Selection and Collection Analysis, Journal of East Asian Libraries, 2016, Volume 2016, Issue 163,