VIVA and the Ulrich’s Serials Analysis System

A Report on the Analysis of Subscriptions in Virginia’s Academic Libraries

Paul Metz

Ulrich’s Serials Analysis System

Continuously updated, fairly comprehensive information on 189,000+ serials

Adds value for qualitative analysis via ISI and Katz information

Utility for decision-making is multiplied when subscription information is added

Steering Committee said “let’s do it!”

First state consortium to give it a whirl

Directors’ Goals:

Assemble the data

Identify “at risk” titles to support possible

“last copy” strategy

Identify “commonly held titles that may be

candidates for electronic purchase”

Data preparation

Bowker met with us and came for training

Loading coordinated by Margot Cronin and Sharon Gasser

Data loaded by May 2004

Local reports supplemented with central information on VIVA, ScienceDirect, Wiley subs

21,000+ title lines with 91,000+ “holdings” records reported

Error reports to individual institutions

How are we doing?

Assemble the data

Identify “at risk” titles to support possible “last

copy” strategy

Identify “commonly held titles that may be

candidates for electronic purchase”

What story do the data want to tell us?

Committee charged with analysis: Rachel Frick, Sharon Gasser, Louveller Luster, Paul Metz, Paul Rittlemeyer, John Walsh

Easier if one person drives – as Sharon Gasser had “driven” data loading, Paul Metz drove analysis

Fairly aggressive analysis, felt empowered to make decisions about the data

Recommendations are from the Resources for Users Committee

The first story the data tell us is that they are very messy

Institutional loading problems and errors

Bowker diagnostics on errors

Variant publisher names

Dept. of Redundancy Dept.

There are lots of duplicate titles

There are lots of duplicate titles

Did I mention the duplicate titles?

“At risk” titles

Frequency distribution of subscriptions over titles

Had to focus on important titles

• “Enhanced Core”: A&I, refereed, and ISI or Katz• “Supercore”: A&I, refereed, ISI, and Katz

After deduping, 1,065 Enhanced Core titles with one holder

Do we care?

There are significantly more Enhanced Core titles

with no holder than with one

“Sometimes there’s a reason”

Recommendation: post list, but apply nothing more than moral suasion

Thinking about “last copy” (non)cancellations:

Be careful re your terminology: holds ≠ subscriptions

Copyright still applies

Remember you can always get it somewhere How much faster do you get from in-state

than from Cal Riverside or Virginia Tech?

How are we doing?

Assemble the data

Identify “at risk” titles to support possible “last

copy” strategy

Identify “commonly held titles that may be

candidates for electronic purchase”

Identifying opportunities for partnerships re “commonly held titles”

Let’s focus on quality, too

Partners are business entities, not bibliographic publishers (Elsevier, Pergamon, N. Holland . . .)

49 possible publishers researched

8 selected for further action

Individual “Supercore” titles also identified for possible action

Possible Partners (business entity)

American Institute of Physics

American Society for Microbiology

American Sociological Association

Blackwell Publishing, Inc.

Cell Press

Human Kinetics Publishers, Inc.

Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics

University of Chicago Press

So What’s the Big Deal?

We have not done as VIVA but

Biggies have ScienceDirect (all titles) and Wiley (all

owned titles) this way

Like Don Sanville, “we had the wrong titles all along”

– Wiley examples

A Most Ingenious Paradox: micro data, macro

decisions

One Extreme or the Other?

All the publishers’ titles –

bully for you, while it lasts. Be gathering data!

A select few –

hoist with their own petard!

Hundreds of titles but no deal –

IMHO, the worst of all worlds

Assemble the data

Identify “at risk” titles to support possible “

last copy” strategy

Identify “commonly held titles that may be candidates for electronic purchase”

How are we doing?

What next?

Renew the subscription for next year!

Work with institutions to improve data loading and reduce number of errors

Decide and implement specific “last copy” and “commonly held title opportunity” strategies

Work with institutions to use USAS as a decision tool

Work with Bowker to improve the product

Inform the profession

Collection Analysis via Peer Comparisons

Paul MetzVirginia Tech

Monographs

Via WorldCat Collection Analysis Package

Two Main Uses

Macro – how do we compare to our peers, overall?

Micro – what good titles have we somehow missed?

Who are our peers?

Alabama Duke Emory Florida State Kentucky LSU North Carolina

NC State Tennessee Tulane Virginia Tech Wake Forest William & Mary

Zoom, Zoom, Zoom

Median Imprint Date: VT = 1983 Group = 1978

Change group

Also checked Books English Adult Level