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The purpose of this paper is to present the results from a quantitative analysis comparing usage levels between an e-monograph collection that has experienced continual growth and an e-monograph collection that has not experienced any recent growth whatsoever. The aim of the study was to determine quantitatively if e-monograph collections with dynamic content experience greater levels of usage compared to e-monograph collections that are static in both size and content.

E-monograph data were separated into a Dynamic and a Static Collection. Usage for e-monographs belonging to the Dynamic Collection was compared to usage of e-monographs belonging to the Static Collection. The number of e-monographs was obtained by simple count. Additional statistics tracked include the number of viewings. A linear regression analysis was used to determine the strength of the linear relationship between collection size and usage.

Results indicate that e-monograph collections that continue to grow in both size and content also continue to experience year-to-year increases in usage, whereas e-monograph collections that remain static in size and content experience a decline in usage. A linear regression analysis indicates the existence of a very strong linear relationship that exists between Dynamic Collection size and usage. A weaker linear relationship was calculated for Static Collection size and usage.

This research is one of very few studies systematically and quantitatively comparing usage levels between e-monographs from growing collections to collections that have not had any new titles added recently.

For most college and university libraries, deselection of monographs should be an essential component of collection development. Few of these libraries have unlimited space for book stack expansion. This research study aims to cover the reasons why this should be undertaken and how it can be accomplished in the humanities and social sciences. At the main campus of Adelphi University Libraries, a conservative approach was used to identify and carefully review monograph titles that were published more than 50 years ago, and, in most cases, this resulted in their deselection without significantly affecting the collection. For some of these titles, the author determined that they might be worth replacing with available e-books and the author did so.

A brief overview is provided to delineate why deselection is important, and how it can be accomplished. A literature review was prepared. It included a review of deselection at small-, medium- and large-sized college and university libraries. The pros and cons of print versus e-books for collection development were reviewed, including four case studies. The feasibility of replacing print reference titles with e-books was also covered. A review of the monograph weeding project at the Adelphi University Library in the humanities and social sciences is provided. Conclusions and a projection of next steps are also included.

An overwhelming majority of the monograph titles reviewed were deselected without adversely affecting the overall quality of the collection. A small number of available e-book editions were selected to replace some of these deselected titles.

All of the titles deselected were published more than 50 years ago. All of these titles were in the social sciences and humanities. The deselection review was limited to philosophy, religion, history, political science, sociology, education and psychology. There were limitations on the amount of time available to review titles in most of these fields, and as a result, only a small percentage of the titles in our collection could be reviewed.

The library has very serious space constraints, which has made it difficult to provide the needed study space for members of the Adelphi University community. Some sections of the book collection are jam packed, with no room for expansion. Deselecting older less used titles and eliminating some sections of book shelves help address both of these problems. Replacing some of these print titles with e-books contributes as well. This deselection project has reduced the holdings of monograph print titles significantly. In the future, the author hopes to rely less on print titles and more on e-books for collection development.

In most fields, college and university students would be better served for their research by more recently published titles. Older, less used titles, as well as those not used at all, should be deselected to make room for more useful and up-to-date titles. As more and more titles become readily available as e-books, the collections of print titles can be reduced. Being able to use e-books even when the library is closed is a great advantage. It should also be noted that these titles can be used by more than one user simultaneously.

In conducting the literature search, the author discovered that there were a large number of titles on deselecting print titles. There was also considerable research on e-book collection development. However, there were few that linked these two important topics. In this research article and case study, the author hopes to have made a significant contribution to linking them together.

Methodologies for determining patron preferences for monographs are a neglected area in library literature. This article describes a method for determining faculty preferences for monographs using subject headings from a print bibliography. Faculty members from the colleges of business at three public universities in Iowa (Iowa State University, University of Iowa and the University of Northern Iowa) were asked to rank 100 subject areas in business administration based on their perceived importance to programs of study within their colleges or departments. A total of 58 percent of the surveys were returned and 46 percent were included in the analysis. Faculties were grouped by department, and subject areas were grouped into categories by discipline. The survey results show that, with some exceptions, faculty ranked subject groups corresponding to their departments higher than other areas. The implications of this study for collection development librarians are noted.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the feasibility of automating Google Scholar searching to harvest citation data of monographs for collection analysis.

This study discusses the creation and refinement of a Scraper application programming interface query structure created to match library collection inventories to their Google Scholar listings to retrieve citation counts.

This paper indicates that Google Scholar is a feasible and usable tool for retrieving monograph citation data.

This study shows that Google Scholar citation data can be harvested for monographs in an automated fashion to serve as a source of bibliographic data, something not typically done outside of individual academics and writers tracking their personal academic impact factors.

The purpose of this article is to describe the quantitative evaluation of an engineering monograph approval plan using circulation analysis.

The circulation frequency of titles purchased under the approval plan was analyzed, and compared with the circulation frequency of all engineering books during the same time period, purchased both individually and through the plan.

It was found that 23 percent of the approval plan books circulated, compared with 6 percent of engineering books as a whole. There was considerable variation in circulation frequency between engineering disciplines, but approval plan books circulated much more frequently in all subject areas.

This study assesses circulation only during the most recent complete year, which means that the approval plan books are all new books. However, more than half of the books in the engineering collection are less than ten years old, so age is unlikely to be the only reason for the much higher circulation of approval books.

Since this evaluation concludes that the approval plan does have value for Rowan University's users, such a plan might be worth considering by other academic libraries looking for a better way to obtain new engineering monographs which serve user needs.

While the circulation data described in this study reflect the unique needs of the Rowan University user community, they can serve as a useful benchmark for engineering librarians who want to assess the usage of their monograph collections. The study also has value for academic librarians who are evaluating an approval plan from YBP or another vendor.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a review of interlibrary loan and document delivery activity by academics and postgraduate students in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences at the University of Western Australia.

The paper analysed statistical data and requests made over a one‐year period.

The analysis identified who used the service and for what purpose. Although there was a decline in the use of the service overall, there was an increase in activity in the Faculty of Arts. Many of the items requested via interlibrary loan fitted within the scope of the Library collection.

The paper provides evidence that monographs remain integral to scholars in the arts and that this type of analysis can contribute to effective collection development.

Use of the monograph collection at Swinburne Library is reported for a six year period during which a relegation programme has been in operation. The programme has involved relocating books to stack and discarding. Loan history was the major criterion for relegation. Although 56,000 volumes have been removed from the open access collection of constant size (113,000 volumes) over the period, the number of loans from the open access collection has remained reasonably constant. There are no signs of unduly high demand for titles in the residual open access collection. There are about six calls per year for each 100 titles removed to stack. The same loan history criteria were applied to all parts of the collection in selecting titles for relocation to stack and there are few signs that inconvenience to library users has been greater in some subject areas than others. An attempt is made to estimate the effect of the stack location in itself on inhibiting borrowing. By good fortune titles have been recruited to the category of titles meeting the relegation criteria at a regular rate. The dynamics of this situation are not understood because it has not been possible to demonstrate a regular decline in borrowing with age for books in the Swinburne Library.

This paper is a thought experiment that investigates the possibilities of moving from the typical “just-in-case” model of managing legacy collections of printed monographs to a centralised “just-in-time” model.

Reliable published statistical data have been used; the core of these are the annual library statistics for UK research libraries collected by SCONUL. From these and other sources, the costs of monograph storage across UK research libraries have been determined.

Establishing a centralised collective collection would bring a large return on investment.

This is not an empirical study.

The value of this study is high.

Librarians nationwide agree that collection assessment is a valuable tool for managing the collection and allocating the materials budget. Libraries invariably list a variety of reasons for why an assessment is out of the question: “Yes, but…we're not automated.” “We don't have enough staff, time, or resources, much less know‐how to carry out an assessment.” Or the time honored, “We've done projects like that before and no one really uses the information in the end.” Despite being essentially excuses, all of these concerns are valid and bear some semblance of truth.

In order to better understand how collections are used, this study aims to present a large‐scale analysis of usage patterns for non‐core monographs in the collections of fourteen general academic libraries of varying sizes.

Using Spectra Dimension, a collection analysis tool, this study compares use data from multiple academic libraries.

It appears that general academic libraries are overinvesting in legal materials and perhaps underinvesting in medical materials.

This study suggests that analysis of use data from multiple libraries may help individual libraries better understand their own collecting needs. Local issues may, however, override the broad patterns identified here.

In lean budgetary times, understanding collection use is key to making informed decisions about resource allocation for collection development. Libraries may be able to use these data to better manage their own materials budgets and collecting practices.

Though there have been a number of large‐scale analyses of collections, most have relied on sampling or have compared small portions of collections, and few have compared use across libraries. This study analyzes collection use across many institutions at a level of detail not possible before the introduction of multi‐library collection analysis tools.