If digital is the future...

Why am I still ordering so many books? I'm wrapping up the month and looking at my budget to see if I'm where I should be in my spending for this time of year. It made me think back to one of the morning sessions at last year's Charleston Conference. The first morning, well, I didn't think those sessions were nearly as good as the rest of the conference. But, one of the things said by a presenter still sticks out in my mind. He said we're "risking the future if we're not going to a digital library."

I have no problem with going digital, especially with journals, but he didn't really define material types, though I did jot down something about reference. I agree - reference titles are well suited for a digital format. However, in order to go digital, so must the publishers. And, I can tell you, many, many publishers are still turning out ooodles of printed books without electronic (digital) counterparts. I've ordered over 100 titles just in the past week and that doesn't include what has come in on approval.

In going through my slips this past week, I did find one Economics title (2 volumes) that was available through the e-book vendor we recently signed up with (the pricing and usage model is incredibly convoluted, but that's a different post), so since we didn't purchase a collection and have been encouraged to purchase titles from this vendor, I decided to get this set in digital format. Each title was one and half times the cost of the print version. I suspect this is due to the convoluted pricing model of the vendor, but if I were on a tight budget (as I was in my previous position), I would have a decision to make regarding how important it was to have the title electronically or just to have the title. Many titles are low usage by the nature of the work (i.e. more theorteical, very specialized, limited audience). Is it justified to purchase in digital format at higher cost just to be digital or is it more prudent to go with the less expensive of the options? Or, will having it in a digital format increase the usage? It will be interesting to see the usage on this title over time as it falls into what I would call a low usage category.

I would like to experiment with others, but this was the only title in all of the slips I went through (and there were a lot) that was available electronically. So, if I take the presenter literally, I should be moving toward having everything in digital format. But maybe not. Maybe he just meant reference. Or maybe he meant we need digital libraries alongside traditional libraries. Regardless of how he is defining it, what I do know is that publishers are still churning out printed books en masse and for most there is no digital/electonic counterpart. Which means I'm still purchasing printed books for the traditional part of my library.

Comparing Collections....

One of the best sessions I attended in Charleston was presented by three librarians from Charleston College, Michael Phillips, Robert Neville, and Marth Stackel. The session: How Different Are You? Analyzing/Comparing Your Collection with Others: WorldCat Techniques in the Expert Mode. To be honest, I'd never thought of using the Expert Search in WorldCat - that blank box can be scary. Not only did they use it, but they used it to compare their collections in various subject areas with other similar or "goal" institutions.

As noted in previous postings, MPOW was evaluating collection analysis tools (Library Dynamics and WorldCat Collection Analysis). My concern with the expenditure was that we hadn't defined how we were going to use said product once we got it. So, I loved this session. Using the Expert Search mode will help me to get my feet wet and determine exactly how I would want to use such a tool.

After returning from the conference, I wasn't sure where to start with my new found knowledge. Then, opportunity presented itself. We received funding from our county to house a second county law library (in addition to the one at the court house). That funding is being withdrawn (everyone has budget issues). So, our directive was to evaluate what we have versus what we need to support our programs and our faculty and staff. It was decided to evaluate the legal collection as whole once our collection development policy for this area was defined. One of the things we decided to do was compare our legal holdings with those of peer institutions in the state. I narrowed the subject area to LC range KF and identified a couple of peer instituitons with Criminal Justice programs (there are other areas, but I started with this one). I followed the basic formula from the examples given in the Charleston Conference session as these parameters fit my needs, though I will be exploring the other limiters available. The one thing that doesn't seem to work for me is limiting by a year range. If I use or (i.e. 2007 OR 2008), that works, but not 2007-2008. However, once the results are listed, I am able to go in a limit the results further by date, which lets me enter a date range or pick from a date list. The date list also shows the number of titles that match the query for each year, which I like. I found that if I compare to more than two schools, it appears to handle date range differently, but I can't be sure. I've done a couple of different versions of my query and have gotten some strange results, but I'm chalking that up to operator error.

Overall, I'm happy with the search results. I would recommend writing out the query in advance (as the presenters also recommended) due to the time out feature in WorldCat. I'd also recommend creating a personal WorldCat account to save the searches. The one thing you can't do (which WorldCat Collection Analysis does do) is export to Excel. As a matter of fact, the export is tied to a text file (very messy and not delimited) or EndNotes or RefWorks. Basically, citation exporting. I did export to RefWorks and then exported from RefWorks to Excel. Kind of clunky. I also discovered that you must pay attention to what you're exporting in both programs and that RefWorks exports a lot.

If you've been thinking about comparing your collection to others, but haven't yet purchased a collection analysis tool, I heartily recommend giving this a go.

Call for Book Contributors and straggling Survey Participants!!

We are writing a book entitled “Federated Search: A Librarian’s Guide”. We are surveying both library practitioners and the federated search vendors to get a complete picture of what the profession is looking for and what the current / forthcoming options are. This data will be combined with a guide on selecting and implementing a federated search tool. The aim is to illuminate all of the decisions necessary in order to alleviate the pitfalls of the process.

There is still time to give us your feedback through our survey and feel free to pass along this link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx? sm=Au1Me4INFknkQbscTVcViw_3d_3d

Additionally, if you are interested in contributing your experience with implementation to the book, please contact me (kewllibrarian01@gmail.com) asap!