These short “pecha kucha-like” sessions will feature 5 PowerPoint presentations of 6 minutes and 40 seconds each. We will have approximately 10 minutes at the end of the session intended for Q&A for all 5 sessions. Come for a lively, rapid-fire group of talks.
1) No Experience Necessary: A Crash Course in Developing Approval Plans
Whitney Kemble, University of Toronto
Whitney Kemble (slides)
This presentation will detail the basics of developing an approval plan for first-timers. Using as a case study the experience of a small academic library that established an approval plan with over twenty profiles to launch with its new liaison librarian program, the session will explore the planning, development, and implementation of an approval plan, with all of its ups and downs. Although the librarians involved in the project were inexperienced, the transition has proven successful, and the profiles continue to evolve.
This session is geared toward librarians who do not currently use approval plans but are interested in learning more about their development. It will touch upon what goes into approval plans, how they function, working with vendors, collections data analysis, budgeting issues, acquisitions workflow, assessment, etc. Attendees will learn about what pitfalls to avoid and what steps to take toward developing and implementing an effective approval plan.
2) Redesigning Workflows and Implementing Demand Driven Acquisitions at Virginia Tech
Connie Stovall, Virginia Tech Collection Management has become increasingly complex. Library budgets are often stagnating, staff time is being redirected towards other needs, and demand for online resources is seemingly insatiable. These realities were part of the impetus behind Virginia Tech Libraries’ decision to begin a one-year Demand Driven Acquisitions (DDA) pilot program.
Virginia Tech implemented a multi-vendor DDA option with YBP Library Services in late 2012. This presentation will provide an overview of the implementation process challenges, and will detail the collection opportunities and financial benefits gained. Our goal is to provide participants with information to assist with their implementation of DDA.
In our study we compared cost and usage data from our 2010 and 2011 approvals and firm orders, COUNTER BR1 reports, and other vendor-provided data. In doing so, we were able to determine cost benefits and identify usage patterns. We will discuss our underlying assumptions regarding patron purchases and share our pilot findings, along with our analysis strategies. Our presentation will also address the issues of duplication, and solutions in effectively receiving eBook titles from our primary aggregators EBL, ebrary, and EBSCOhost.
The implementation and integration of DDA was not a simple, one-step process. We continue to assess our workflow to meet the challenges of integrating DDA with our discovery layer Summon, managing cost, and addressing access problems.
3) 120 to 12: reducing days to shelf with vendor services, cat-on-receipt and automated bib overlaySherle Abramson-Bluhm, University of Michigan
(slides) The University of Michigan Technical Services underwent a major re-organization in 2007, combining the Serials & Acquisitions Division with the Cataloging Division which led to a substantial reduction in time-to-shelf and reallocated resources for the increasing electronic assets and long neglected special projects. This presentation will detail the changes made in staffing configurations and responsibilities as well as adjustments in workflow. It also describes the U of M experience with vendor services such as use of vendor records for a modified EDI ordering process and utilizing shelf-ready processing. To speed materials to the shelf, new print acquisitions were mainstreamed and cataloging on receipt was implemented for materials with bibliographic copy. A procedure to flag records needing further work was developed and implemented with the collaboration of the library systems staff. These flagged records were then searched online monthly via an automated process using defined matching points to find and accept a fuller record for overlay. Only those materials for which a better record was not found, would be reviewed for further cataloging which might be required. In this re-organization, some staff members were reassigned to areas in Electronic Resources and Access, while experienced and rare book catalogers could focus on un-cataloged materials in Special Collections such as Transportation History and Rare books; as well as significant gifts including a 20,00 item collection of Sheet Music and The Walp Collection of Children’s Literature. The presentation will relate successes and lessons learned and illustrate the benefits to library patrons.
4) A Demand-Driven-Preferred Approval Plan
Ann Roll, California State University, Fullerton
Ann Roll (slides) California State University, Fullerton’s Pollak Library is working toward the goal of providing as much content in electronic format as possible. To address this need along with a shrinking budget for monographs, the Library recently moved to not only an e-preferred approval plan, but actually a demand-driven-preferred approval plan. Pollak Library had a successful DDA plan in place for some time, in which slipped approval plan titles were automatically added to the Library catalog and made available for short-term-loan via DDA. With some slight workflow adjustments, approval plan titles that were sent automatically as books, rather than slips, are also being made available for short-term-loan via DDA rather than being purchased automatically.
This presentation will discuss the Library’s transition to a DDA-preferred approval plan and its effects on budget and collecting. Attendees can expect to learn the pros and cons of this approach. While librarian attendees can discuss how to implement a DDA-preferred approval plan in their own libraries, vendor and publisher attendees can discuss ways of streamlining this process.
5) Approval Plan Assessment: A Collection Management Initiative
Chris Palazzolo, Emory University Contemporary collection management often heralds the decline of print collections. However, at Woodruff Library (Emory University), we continue to build significant physical collections to meet the curricular and research needs of our students and faculty. We have recently begun to expand our approval plans to allow for the purchase and acquisition of e-titles. With this growth (and demand for space) has come the need for assessment of these collections. As one method of assessing the use of Woodruff Library’s monograph collection, we have decided to examine the number of loans for print and e-books (short-term loans and title requests in this case) across all subject areas during a three-year period to identify the subject areas of books (as well as publishers and series) that were loaned most or least frequently. Analyses were performed for both approval plan purchases (e and print) and firm orders from Yankee Book Peddler. By matching up circulation data with publisher and series information for each book title, we have been able to progressively narrow our analyses and ultimately reveal specific subject areas and publishers for which future purchasing decisions could potentially be modified. We plan to present the results of our analysis, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this approach, and consider how variations in the patterns of use across different subject areas might impact collection development decisions. We hope that session participants will learn from our methodology and offer relevant commentary and suggestions for refinement and future research. The session should be interactive, and allow for ample participation.
