New Study Released by ITHAKA S+R on Library Acquisition Patterns

Library Acquisitions Patterns, Report by Katherine Daniel, Joseph J. Esposito and Roger C. Schonfeld. 
https://sr.ithaka.org/publications/2019-report-library-acquisition-patterns/

Researchers at ITHAKA S+R, with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, conducted a study and released a recent report analyzing purchasing tends in two areas at US academic libraries.  One area of the project relied on 2017 data from 124 libraries using Ex Libris’s integrated library system, ALMA, or OCLC’s WorldShare Management Services (WMS).  A second area concentrated on print and e-book purchasing trends of 51 US academic libraries for fiscal years 2014 through 2017.

Two interesting findings from the 2017 report:

-On average, the libraries within the sample spent $3.61 million in 2017 and added 4,750 print books and 345 e-books acquired on a one-time, title-by-title basis

-Ongoing resource expenditures account for three-quarters of total materials expenditures with one-fifth going towards onetime purchases.

Two interesting findings from the 2014 to 2017 trend analysis:

-The average cost of an e-book in the sample rose by 35 percent between 2014 and 2017, while the cost of print books remained stable.

-GOBI and Amazon were the leading vendors of print books in the sample. GOBI was the leading vendor of e-books

With a mission to broaden access to higher education by reducing costs and improving student outcomes, ITHAKA S+R  is a nonprofit organization that partners with a wide range of organizations in the academic community including foundations, universities, libraries, colleges, scholarly societies, publishers, as well as individual.

Read the full report at DOI: https://doi.org/10.18665/sr.310937

Getting to Know TS Librarians: Carol Collins

1. Introduce yourself (name & position). 

Greetings fellow TS-SIS members.  I am Carol Morgan Collins, Head of Technical Services, Joel A. Katz Law Library, University of Tennessee, College of Law.  I began work here as Catalog Librarian in 2001 and was promoted to Head of Technical Services in 2012.

2. Does your job title actually describe what you do? Why/why not?

Yes, but Technical Services work seems to vary among libraries. The functions at Katz include cataloging, serials management and claiming, processing physical items, loading catalog records to provide access to electronic resources, exporting records to the discovery layer, and coordinating campus-wide access with the main library.

3. What are you reading right now?

I am reading Nonviolent Communication a Language of Life by Marshall Rosenberg.  

4. You suddenly have a free day at work, what project would you work on?

If I have a free day at work, I would dig deeper into the history of the University Of Tennessee College Of Law.  Earlier histories are available, but I have uncovered information from digitized collections not incorporated into those versions. I find the biographical facts of early faculty members fascinating.

Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources (COUNTER) R5 Update effective January 2019

COUNTER, founded in 2002, is a non-profit organization supported globally by a community of library, publisher and vendor members. Members contribute to the development of the Code of Practice (COP) through working groups and outreach. The Code of Practice provides guidance and enables content providers to produce consistent, comparable and credible usage data for their online content. This allows librarians and other interested parties to compare the usage data they receive, and to understand and demonstrate the value of the electronic resources to which they subscribe. In 2014, the organization developed and implemented COUNTER Release 4 (R4) as the Code of Practice for information providers. With the rapid development of technology, this rendition soon became outdated and complex. A working group of librarians, publishers, representative of ERM systems, and other usage service providers came together to meet changing needs and reduce complexity. The aim was to simplify reports, increase consistency and clarify metric types and reports. The group released a new iteration, COUNTER R5, which replaces the former release and becomes mandatory for content providers beginning this month, January 2019. See COUNTER's online guide, The friendly guide to release 5 for librarians and read more at the COUNTER website.