Resources for college libraries

Resources for College
Libraries : What do the
Numbers Mean?
Sue Beidler
Lycoming College
Charleston Conference November 4, 2010

Agenda
 Overview of Lycoming’s Environment
 Overview of Resources for College Libraries
 What is BBAS (/Bowker’s Book Analysis
System)?
 How We Use RCLWeb
 How We Use BBAS
 Discussion

Overview of Lycoming’s Environment
 Lycoming College: private, 4-year, approx.1400
FTE
 Traditional Liberal Arts
 5 Librarians, 6 support staff
 An active collaborative instruction program that
teaches the responsible use of research sources,
building the skills to find, evaluate, and integrate
information is a key aspect of our mission.

Overview of Lycoming’s Environment
 Local ILS: TLC’s Library•Solution 4.2
 Collection of approx. 155,000 cataloged volumes
 Annual monograph/standing order budget of
approximately $120K
 2,300 new cataloged volumes added annually

Overview of Resources for College
Libraries
 Successor to Books for College Libraries (BCL3)
 Collaborative project between ACRL, CHOICE,
and R.R. Bowker
 Available in print and as an online tool
(RCLWeb)
 First released in 2006
 Online version is updated quarterly

Overview of BBAS
(Bowker’s Book Analysis System)
 Electronically compares local collection to the
RCL database
 Provides array of reports that can be customized
 Duplicate titles
 Invalid ISBNs

Overview of BBAS
(Bowker’s Book Analysis System)
 Electronically compares local collection to the
RCL database
 Provides array of reports that can be customized
 Duplicate titles
 Invalid ISBNs
 Statistical reports by RCL Subjects, LC Classification or

Core titles in library

Core titles NOT in library

Total # of core titles

% of core titles held

Lycoming’s Uses for RCLWeb
 Evaluating gift books for inclusion in our
collection
 Generally do a quick title search in RCLWeb for
possible keepers
 Are likely to keep the book if any edition is in RCL
 Sometimes will also search by author – if there are a
number of titles by the author we may keep if the title
is curriculum related

Lycoming’s Current Uses for RCL Book
Analysis results
 Retrospective Collection Development –
Photography Project
 Overview of Project
 Used “Don’t have” list to work from with faculty
 Improved from 27.74% coverage in 2007 to 51.82%
coverage in 2008 as a result of this project

Analysis results
 Weeding/De-selection decisions
 Faculty from specific disciplines selected each year
 They’re set loose in the stacks with very general
guidelines
 Any items they think should be withdrawn are put on
a book truck
 I pull up the list of RCL titles we have in that call
number range – anything on the RCL list goes back to
the shelves immediately, but is marked that it is in
RCL

Analysis results
 Assessment
 Meetings with academic departments regarding the
collection
 Sometimes used in preparation for the meeting – a gauge of
strength or weakness
 Sometimes used as follow-up – Mathematical Sciences –
even though there was no response from the faculty
 Track changes in our holdings from year to year, by
discipline

Analysis results
 Challenges
 Analysis is always done against the current RCL
database
 Must save analyses at the time you run them
 Exported statistics cannot be manipulated

What do the numbers
mean?

What can the analysis tell us?
 RCLWeb
 Book Analysis System

How would/could we go about
developing comparisons with
similar size/type libraries?

How might we determine
comparison libraries?

Contact Information
Sue Beidler
Snowden Library
Lycoming College
700 College Place
Williamsport, PA 17701
570-321-4084
beidler@lycoming.edu

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