This document discusses moving from traditional supply-driven library collections to demand-driven collections using data analysis. It notes that collection budgets are unsustainable under traditional models and that data can help lower costs by making collections more precise and responsive to user needs. The document advocates analyzing usage data to modify collecting practices and asserts that demand-driven, user-focused models will become a larger share of budgets. It provides examples of how North Carolina State University uses data like usage statistics, citations, and user feedback to evaluate resources and make evidence-based decisions about collections.

1. Clay Shirky, Fantasy Football, and Using Data to
Glean the Future of Library Collections
Greg Raschke and John Vickery,
North Carolina State University
Charleston Conference
November 3, 2010

2. Assumptions
 Economics are not sustainable
 Collections budgets will not grow at rate of past 30 years
 Unit growth and growth in cost per unit are not sustainable
 Need to lower costs of overall system
 Lower unit costs
 Use data and users to be more precise
 Therefore collection practices and strategies must change
 This change will be hard – much reason for optimism

3. Supply-Side Collections
 Print-based, unpredictable
demand, and legitimate need for
just in case collections
 Lead to judging quality by size (as
in the ARL rankings) and libraries
were then held captive to this
standard
 Contributed to inelastic demand
for journals and a combination of
speculative and package buying
 Use is secondary to size, dollars
expended, and other input
measures
 Credit to David Lewis
(http://ulib.iupui.edu/users/dlewis)

4. Supply-Side Can Not Continue

5. Demand-Driven Collections
 Make information easily,
widely, and cheaply available
 Collections as drivers of
research, teaching, and
learning
 To make special or unique
collections held/managed by
the library available to the user
community and the world

6. Demand-Driven – Changing Practice
 Tension between time-honored role as custodians of scholarship
versus enabling digital environment for scholars
 Not just PDA – portfolio of approaches, but certainly more
responsive
 Utilize new tools and techniques to become advanced analysts
 Truly embrace evidence based decision making
 Look at how collections are actually used, not at expressed need

7. Demand-Driven – More Assumptions
 Less tolerance for and less
investment in lower use
general collections
 Resource management based
increasingly on use
 Modify collecting based on
changes in the actual use
 Risks of doing nothing –
newspapers

8. Demand-Driven – Assertions
 Rewards of adapting – more
used and vital than ever
 Use based and user driven
collecting models will take
growing share of budget
 Bet on numbers
 Bet on good and quick
 Put resources into enabling
digital environment for
scholars and custodian role
will come out of that strategy

9. Why So Much Data?
 Data analysis is a key component in solving/managing:
 Increasing pressure for accountability
 Increasing capability to gather and analyze data
 Increasing precision in the way we build collections and expend
resources
 Advocacy
 Changing practice and data analysis at NCSU

11. Serials Review 2009 – Open, Data-Driven,
and Real-Time Analysis
 Standardized usage data
(where available)
 Bibliometrics - publication
data and citation patterns
(e.g LJUR)
 Impact factor and eigenfactor
 User community feedback via
interactive, database-driven
applications
 Weigh/calculate/quantify user
feedback
 Weigh price against multiple
data points
 Usage ((07 usage+08 usage/2)+
(publications*10)+ (citations*5)+
(Impact Factor)
 Community Feedback
((Weighted Ranking x % Match)
x Total # Rankings) + 0.1 x # of
"1s“
 Price/feedback value
 Price/use
 Merge results to filter out top
20% and bottom 20%

12. Looking closer – Finding balance
An example - a closer look at print item usage
 Traditional ILS reporting tools can make this difficult
 Advanced analytical tools can help
 What types of questions can we ask?
 Should Patron-Driven records not purchased be purged after 2 years?
 How does print item usage break down?
 Do print items even get used?

13. If it’s not used after 2 years…
Should PDA records
be purged?
Maybe…
We haven’t even hit
50% usage
But what if we take
a longer view…

14. If it’s not used after 2 years…
 Things begin to
look different

15. Looking even closer…
 How does
print item use
break down?
 Single circ
usage is
consistently
~14%
 Would this
change in a
PDA only
world?

16. Expenditures to University Data

17. Expenditures to University Data

18. Expenditures to University Data

19. Expenditures to University Data

20. Measurable Uses of the Collection 2009/2010
Full-text journal downloads* 3,672,600
Database use 1,989,972
Print book circulations/renewals 525,430
Digital collections requests 471,403
E-books 149,815
Reserves** 327,267
Total Uses 7,136,487
* Includes use of NC LIVE full-text content
** Includes textbook, print, and e-reserves usage
Measurable Uses of the Collection 2009/2010

21. Challenges
 Have ability to be more precise, more used, and more relevant than
ever – need to make the necessary changes
 Apps are a risk – silo(ing) networked, web environment –
connections where libraries can excel
 Not enough data - still lack much of the comprehensive data we
need – must improve quickly
 Data can punish niche areas, disciplinary variation, and titles without
data
 Open resources impact ability to control and command data