2014 Charleston Library Conference

The importance of collection assessment and evaluation has been a hot topic due to increasing budget restrictions and the need to prove worth to stakeholders through greater evidence-based evaluations. These types of collection assessments include more robust analyses including holdings percentages compared to ILL requests and gap analyses by subject areas. While the library community embraces these assessments, less thought has been given to how to best conduct this research and get the cleanest data to tell the right story. The data to do these types of analyses often reside in complex infrastructures not fully understood by the collection managers or subject librarians. They can exist in highly complex web-environments as well as multiple systems. The University of Houston Libraries embarked on a large-scale gap analysis of the collection by subject area. The team developed a research matrix, input/output variables, and an analytical plan to guide the research but the key component to success was quickly, accurately, and properly mining the data sources such as Sierra and the Electronic Resource Management system. To do this, the team worked collaboratively with the Electronic Resources Department.

The objective of the session is to outline both the methodology of the research and how each stepped mapped to collaboration with experts who work daily within the systems housing the data . Our collection team contends that collaboration with expertise led to far more accurate and expedient data collection and analyses. It also allowed the team to more quickly develop complete and accurate datasets, that would not have been possible without collaboration.

The presentation will include variable list development, data collection steps, initial struggles, and cleaning and interpretation of the data through collaborative efforts. Findings will be presented through graphs and robust holdings and ILL ratio analyses.