2017 Charleston Library Conference

Most academic libraries offer numerous eBooks alongside their print titles. Traditionally, print materials have been chosen by subject liaisons with input from departmental faculty, whereas eBooks have been acquired en masse through large collection purchases, subscriptions, or PDA/DDA programs that include large numbers of discovery records. Print budgets have traditionally been divided into subject areas by Acquisition and Collection Development librarians using formulas based on criteria, such as the number of students in a discipline, level of program (bachelor, master or doctorate), and average cost of materials in a subject area. This budget breakdown is an attempt to balance the library’s collection so that it reflects the focus and emphasis of the curriculum being taught on campus. However, when purchasing large eBook packages, librarians rarely consider the traditional funding formula or subject divisions. This analysis treats eBooks and print books as equal in the collection and attempts to answer the question: what impact are eBook packages having on the scope and effectiveness of a library’s collection? Most libraries have never performed a broad collection analysis that takes into account the level of collecting by subject area that includes both print and eBook materials – including both purchased and discovery records loaded through a DDA/PDA program. This presentation examines the impact of eBook collections on the overall scope and depth of the library’s collection by analyzing four specific subject areas and comparing the level of coverage of print materials to that of eBook titles. The data will be interpreted by a collection development librarian, cataloger and electronic resources librarian. The audience will go through the analysis process based on their own situation with data examples provide by the presenters. Followed by a discussion about strategies to analyze this type of collection data.