Evidence Summary
Comparison of Print Monograph Acquisitions Strategies Finds Circulation
Advantage to Firm Orders
A Review of:
Ke, I., Gao, W., & Bronicki, J.
(2017). Does title-by-title selection make a difference? A usage title analysis
on print monograph purchasing. Collection
Management, 42(1), 34-47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01462679.2016.1249040
Reviewed by:
Laura Costello
Head of Research and Emerging Technologies
Stony Brook University Libraries
Stony Brook, New York, United States of America
Email: [email protected]
Received: 1
June 2017 Accepted: 25 July 2017
2017 Costello.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons‐Attribution‐Noncommercial‐Share Alike License 4.0
International (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/),
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly attributed, not used for commercial
purposes, and, if transformed, the resulting work is redistributed under the
same or similar license to this one.
Abstract
Objective – To compare usage of print monographs acquired
through firm order to those acquired through approval plans.
Design – Quantitative study.
Setting – A public research university serving an annual
enrollment of over 43,500 students and employing more than 2,600 faculty
members in the South Central United States.
Subjects – Circulation and call number data from 21,356 print
books acquired through approval plans, and 23,920 print books acquired through
firm orders.
Methods – Item records for print materials purchased between
January 1, 2011 and December 31, 2014 were extracted from the catalog and
separated by acquisitions strategy into firm order and approval plan lists.
Items without call numbers and materials that had been placed on course
reserves were removed from the lists. The authors examined accumulated
circulation counts and conducted trend analyses to examine year-to-year usage.
The authors also measured circulation performance in each Library of Congress
call number class; they grouped these classes into science, social science, and
humanities titles.
Main Results – The authors found that 31% of approval plan books
and 39% of firm order books had circulated at least once. The firm order books
that had circulated were used an average of 1.87 times, compared to approval
plan books which were used an average of 1.47 times. The year-to-year analysis
showed that the initial circulation rate for approval plan books decreased from
42% in 2011 to 14% in 2014, and from 46% to 24% for
firm order books. Subject area analysis showed that medicine and military
science had the highest circulation rates at over 45%, and that agriculture and
bibliography titles had the lowest circulation rates. Subject area groups
showed the same pattern, with books in the social sciences and sciences
experiencing more significant circulation benefits to firm order purchasing.
Conclusion – Monographs acquired through firm orders circulated
at a slightly higher rate than those acquired through approval plans.
Commentary
This study centers on print collection development
practices. The authors quickly and correctly identify that there is conflict in
this genre, alongside a lack of generalizability because of differences in
scope, sample size, and methodology. In accordance with this, the authors cite
two studies that found circulation advantages for titles purchased via approval
plan (Ellis, Ghouse, Claassen-Wilson, Stratton, &
Clement, 2009; Tucker, 2009) and another that found advantages to firm orders
(Tyler, Falci, Melvin, Epp,
& Kreps, 2013). Though the findings may vary for any given library, there
is plenty of food for thought in this article. The study examined all of the
public research university’s print monograph circulation data within a
relatively narrow range of years, so the findings are able to avoid some of the
complications of assessing collections that have accumulated slowly over a long
period of time (Fry, 2015).
The sample pulled out approval plan purchases with a
note on the item record and firm orders represented the other print purchases,
so it is difficult to tell exactly how the firm orders were collected. For
example, some of the disciplines may have had more faculty involvement in
requests, while others were selected entirely by the librarian. The study did
find a particular advantage to firm orders that represented purchases outside
of the disciplines offered by the University or spanning multiple disciplines;
this could suggest that the flexibility of human intervention over the fixed
approval plan was part of the reason for its advantage. The authors also point
out that librarians seemed to alter their firm orders in response to changes in
their academic programs, while leaving their approval plans static.
Beyond the scope of the research question, the authors
identify a low percentage of total circulations to purchased materials in both
firm and approval orders, and a steeply declining circulation rate for all
print monographs over the study period. The sample excluded serials and
electronic materials, so it is not clear whether usage is migrating to
non-print platforms, moving outside the library, or disappearing altogether.
This study is clearly outlined and very replicable as
described in Glynn’s critical appraisal tool (2006). It would be useful to
replicate it in similar and different institutions to establish better
baselines for print circulation statistics, especially since this study flagged
a decline in print circulation rates over the past few years. If this is true
of other institutions, deep changes should be in the works for collection
development processes. This study only used descriptive statistics, so this
type of work would help determine standards for the significance of collections
data, which could help add meaning to statistics like these. There are many
other methods for providing access to scholarly content; libraries would
benefit from reputable collection usage benchmarks to indicate when change
should occur in collection development strategies.
References
Ellis, E. L., Ghouse, N. J.,
Claassen-Wilson, M., Stratton, J. M., & Clement, S. K. (2010). Comparing approval and librarian-selected monographs:
An analysis of use. In D. Orcutt (Ed.), Library
data: Empowering practice and persuasion (pp. 53-68). Santa Barbara, CA:
Libraries Unlimited.
Fry, A. (2015). Conventional wisdom or faulty logic?
The recent literature on monograph use and e-book
acquisition. Library Philosophy
and Practice, (1), 1-27. Retrieved from
http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac/1307
Glynn, L. (2006). A critical appraisal tool for
library and information research. Library Hi Tech, 24(3),
387-399. https://doi.org/10.1108/07378830610692154
Tucker, J. C. (2009). Collection assessment of monograph purchases at
the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Libraries. Collection Management, 34(3), 157-181. https://doi.org/10.1080/01462670902962959
Tyler, D. C., Falci, C.,
Melvin, J. C., Epp, M., & Kreps, A. M. (2013). Patron-driven acquisition and circulation at an academic library:
Interaction effects and circulation performance of print books acquired via
librarians’ orders, approval plans, and patrons’ interlibrary loan requests. Collection
Management, 38(1), 3-32. https://doi.org/10.1080/01462679.2012.730494