LAM, Allen

PICKARD, Valerie
6 Juen 2008
CITE Research Symposium 2008
Library Collection
Nanotechnology
journal collection
in
HKUST Library
HKUST Library Mission and
Goals
Expand aggressively the scope and extent
of electronic resources,
Especially e-journals and web-based
reference tools
Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology is a rapidly growing
academic field
Interdisciplinary in nature
Nanotechnology is a major area of
research in HKUST
Focus on e-journals
Users of the collection are mostly
researchers and PG students.
The collection is composed of mostly e-
journals.
This evaluation concentrates on e-
journals.
Collection-based Use- or User-based
Quantitative
Book counting,
Budget analysis, etc.
Circulation statistics, Journal
usage statistics, etc.
Qualitative
List checking,
Citation analysis,
etc.
User surveys, Focus groups,
etc.
(based on J ohnson, 2004)
Immediately available
statistical data
Local statistics :
Usage statistics e-journal, circulation, book
request logs, ILL, DDS, etc.
National/international statistics:
Journal citation report, journal usage report by ISI
Journal citation analysis by Scopus
In-cites
Google Scholar

JCR
Data 1
JCR
Journal Citation Report
by ISI, Thomson research services
Impact Factor (IF) impact upon the research
community
COUNTER
Data 2
A standard for generating and exchanging
usage reports
Most useful for e-journals usage
Generated monthly by vendors/publishers
to subscribers (libraries)
We focus on Number of full-text access
JURO
HKUST Library is using a system called
JURO to keep and manage the COUNTER
data.
Combining JCR & COUNTER
This COUNTER report summary lists all
titles found in JCR.
The titles are ordered in the same manner
as the JCR, sorted in descending order by
Impact Factor.
There are a few unavailable or print-only
titles for which no usage statistics are
available, but are inserted to the usage
report for direct comparison between the
two tables.
Side by side comparison
Observations from data
Most titles found in JCR are heavily used in HKUST Library
during the years.
Titles having high JCR impact factors tends to be accessed
more often in HKUST Library; titles having impact factors
lower than 1.0 tends to be less often used
Those journals showing "lower" usage are actually not too
underused if we compare them with the overall e-journal
usage of HKUST Library
Observations
from data
During 2006, 35% of all e-journals
were never used at all!
There was another 35% of e-journal lightly used,
with an access count of 1 to 10.
The majority of journals found in JCR are heavily
used (in the top 7% usage among all subscripted e-
journals).
Identify items for acquisition
Look for journals with high IF
Investigate any new and forthcoming journals
Consult users
Other libraries holding
Identify items for weeding
Weeding the zero usage counts?
Be suspicious with statistics data
Consult potential users
Identify items for weeding
Weeding the low impact factors?
Be aware that JCR does not cover recent
data
Serving users needs should be a priority
Identify items for
weeding
Weeding the useless ones?
1/3 of all e-journals were not accessed
Bulk purchase, inelastic subscription
contracts
Libraries want more flexible subscription
arrangements
Evaluation aided by
electronically collected
statistical data
lower cost, less manual work
fast, timely results
objective
repeatable
can be done more frequently
closer monitoring of the collection health
faster response to the needs of users, to the needs of
the community/institution that the library belongs
faster response in updating decisions in collection
development and management, in acquisition and
weeding
Limitation
Usage statistics of non-circulating printed
items, especially printed journals, are
difficult to collect.
Automate collection evaluation
Base on existing usage data
Base on citation analysis reports
Mathematical and rule-based
Data
collection
Data
processing
Evaluation Report
Automate collection evaluation
Save librarians from monotonous and
laborious list checking work
Allowing them to concentrate in their
professional judgment to making
collection development decisions