From: "Black, Douglas M" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2014 13:12:12 +0000

The Cornell study is fascinating, and while the data conclusions
undoubtedly resonate across ARLs, the report's caution about applying
them too broadly is well found.  We've been examining some of the same
data in similar manner here at Northern Michigan University--a
mid-size regional university with but a handful of master's
programs--and the circulation distribution is quite different.  NMU
has neither Ph.D programs nor the major research initiatives graduate
faculty would be pursuing.  A very brief initial snapshot of our data:

1) Our greatest users of print monographs are undergraduates, at 47.7%
of the total.

2) The next largest user is a statewide resource-sharing group
including all library types, at 20.11%.

3) Faculty usage comes in third, at 14.28% of the total and less than
a third of undergraduate usage.

4) Grad students, unsurprisingly with so few in proportion, are at
2.6%, less than university staff or local community users.  The latter
groups are important because of the university's geographic isolation
and its resulting relationships with the local and regional
community...and even to the climate, with the long winters up here.

We have a lot of analysis left to do in order to work out more clearly
the usage patterns and what they might mean.  One of the more
challenging parts is accurately developing appropriate contexts in
which to understand the data.  That analysis has to include
consideration of the institution's mission, characteristics, role(s)
in the community, and other qualitative factors in addition to the
disciplinary distinctions Sandy outlines.

Thanks to Joe and Sandy for the link and comments.

Douglas

Douglas Black
Collection Development Librarian
Northern Michigan University
Marquette, MI 49855


-----Original Message-----
From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2014 09:46:45 -0500

This is indeed an impressive report, the most detailed and carefully
constructed such analysis I've ever seen.  It reveals great
sensitivity to the limitations of any such analysis (read especially
the section on "complicating factors") and the potential dangers in
taking a "one size fits all" approach to any possible actions based on
the analysis.

These are just a few points that struck me:

1) It does not surprise me at all that graduate students would be the
greatest users of monographs, faculty somewhat less so, and
undergraduates the least.   Graduate students are focused on using and
doing advanced research in their special fields, and spend the
majority of their time doing so, whereas this is not true for either
faculty (who have a lot of other responsibilities beyond doing
research and writing articles or books) and undergraduates.  When I
was an editor at Princeton University Press in the 1970s, the Press
pioneered in publishing paperbacks of monographs simultaneously with
hardbacks called Limited Paperback Editions (LPEs), and these were
targeted for sale to graduate students, with print runs and prices set
for this specific market.

2)  "Make past monograph usage, understood in context, one facet in
decision making about future CUL acquisitions and investment in the
collection."  This is one of the report's five recommendations.
Interestingly, it mimics the practice of decisionmaking within
university presses, which base publication decisions in part on
historical sales data for similar monographs published earlier. PUP
was particularly adept at using such data, with its business
department preparing annual reports on rates of sale for monographs in
different disciplines, and subfields, in which the Press published.
All recommendations from editors about print runs for new titles had
to cite such data as justification.

3) These are conclusions the report recommends against drawing:

* High or low circulation rates should not be attributed to a single
straightforward cause, particularly in light of wide variation in the
role of print monographs in different disciplines.

* The Library should not adopt specific across-the-board targets for
the circulation rate of print monographs acquired for the collection.

* The Library should not halt or diminish acquisitions in particular
non-English languages absent a detailed understanding of language
distribution among the disciplines and across the broad patron base on
campus.

And later the report says: "And apart from the issue of publication
medium, the disciplines are still divided around the relative
importance they assign to journal and monograph publications; while
the reliance on journal literature is arguably greater in the sciences
than in the humanities, here again it is important to keep subtle
differences among the individual disciplines in mind."

In fact, the differences go beyond just differences between broad
categories like the sciences and humanities or even between
disciplines; they also represent differences among subfields within a
single discipline.  Anyone familiar with Political Science, for
example, realizes that there is a spectrum of the "relative importance
they assign to journal and monograph publications" among the four main
subfields ranging from highest priority on articles for American
Politics through International Relations and Comparative Politics to
highest priority on books for Political Theory at the other end.  Any
conclusions to be drawn about usage of monographs in Political Science
needs to take these differences into account.

4) Among the "complicating factors" is this very important one: "For
these reasons, we have elected to concentrate on lending rather than
in-library use, even though we realize that this may skew the data,
especially for collections and call number ranges that include large
numbers of non- circulating reference materials. We have excluded all
designated non-circulating items from the circulation analyses in this
report, although we recognize that some unit libraries do, in fact,
lend these 'non- circulating' items under certain circumstances. We
recognize that circulation is an imperfect surrogate for use of items
in the  collection."  I have always felt that studies focusing just on
circulation do not fully capture the usage of books in libraries, and
the Cornell task forces clearly agrees.

At any rate, as Joe suggests, this report offers a much more
fine-grained analysis than we've seen from others who want to draw
sweeping conclusions based just on circulation figures for one
academic library.  This is hardly all good news for university
presses, of course, which have much to lose from a shift away from
"just in case" collecting to "just in time" collection development.

Sandy Thatcher