St. John Fisher College's Lavery Library is focused on assessment. One area being examined is the value of library collections (monographs and videos) in supporting the library's mission. Library Acquisitions and Collection Development is in a prime position to contribute to these efforts in effective, efficient ways. Acquisitions' value will be directly aligned with the Library's strategic goals and outcomes, which have been designed to support the College's strategic goals. Our purchase on demand program began in 2009 with the installation of the GIST software which runs off of ILLiad. We capitalize on the value added service provided by GIST to capture data from the patron at the point of request, which we use to analyze and assess how Lavery Library supports student learning through its collections. We are enhancing the material request transaction to align with the assessment of our collection and Acquisitions' impact on student learning and critical thinking skills.
Attendees will learn how Lavery's purchase on demand initiative goes against trends toward automating the process. Using a case of study of ILL Loan requests, the presenter seeks to demonstrate that the benefits of providing unique assessment data outweigh the time spent in reviewing requests. This session will offer the potential for assessing the value of a Library's collections from POD, just one prong in our collection development plan. We still have a responsibility for building and curating collections and we need to find innovative ways to connect users to the collections and resources we have. The audience will engage with one another to discuss Acquisitions' role in:
- assessing library collections;
- assessing library services;
- assessing learning, as mapped to ACRL information literacy standards;
- as well as strategies for scaling to various sized libraries.
