Brinley Franklin

Successful Web Survey Methodologies for Measuring the Impact of Networked Electronic Services (MINES for Libraries)

MINES for Libraries is a web-based survey methodology that is proving to be a valid and reliable method for assessing networked electronic resources usage. The methodology has collected usage data on the libraries’ electronic resources, including electronic journals, electronic books, databases, the online catalog, and services such as interlibrary loan. It can also integrate data on non-subscription resources such as digital collections, open access journals, pre-print and post-print servers, and institutional repositories. This web survey method is more successful in libraries that have implemented a network assessment infrastructure. To illustrate its utility, an overview of the methodology, a discussion of assessment infrastructures, and recent results from MINES for Libraries surveys at more than 30 North American universities during the last 2 years are presented, including health sciences libraries, main academic libraries, and a Canadian library consortium of colleges and universities.

Aligning Library Strategy and Structure With the Campus Academic Plan: A Case Study

ABSTRACT Colleges and universities’ missions are typically comprised of educating students, training professionals, engaging in scholarship and research, promoting creative activity, improving healthcare, and providing public service. Academic libraries exist to support these core functions, yet most academic libraries are organized based on library functions rather than the primary missions of their college or university. This article describes one academic librarys attempt to align library strategy and structure with its universitys academic plan.

Surviving to Thriving: Advancing the Institutional Mission

ABSTRACT Academic research libraries can employ several approaches to advance the institutional mission. First, libraries can shift from goals focused on collections and traditional library services and instead align with their campus academic plan and an emphasis on supporting the institutions strategic initiatives. A second approach is for libraries to modify their organizational structures from being function-based on the tasks that traditional libraries performed (e.g., public services, technical services, collection development) and move instead toward organizational units that directly support their universitys missions (e.g., undergraduate education; graduate and professional education; research, scholarship, and creative activity; and public engagement). The key is to have library staff engaged in work that contributes to vital institutional outcomes such as student success and faculty research productivity. Academic research libraries should also continue to work towards an assessment program that demonstrates the value of the academic research library in providing quality services that advance the institutional mission.

Managing the Electronic Collection with Cost per Use Data

This paper reviews some of the early efforts to develop cost per use data for electronic collections and discusses some of the ways libraries, consortia, and publishers currently use unit cost information to make management decisions. Emerging trends in the standardization of electronic usage statistics and concurrent utilization of cost per use data to manage electronic collections hold tremendous potential for libraries and library consortia to increasingly employ reliable cost and use data to support collection development and management decisions.

Networked electronic services usage patterns at four academic health sciences libraries

An examination of the methodology and results from patron use surveys of networked electronic services at four geographically disparate academic health science libraries in the USA between 1999 and 2002. The principal fields of inquiry include demographic differences between in‐house library users as compared to remote library users by status of user; users’ purposes for accessing electronic services; how the purpose of use differs between traditional, in‐person, library services; and differences in usage of electronic resources based upon the location of users. The results of this study should help guide service decisions in academic health sciences libraries.

Measuring the impact of networked electronic resources

Purpose – As libraries are developing a larger Web presence, issues regarding the utility, accessibility, and impact of the usage of their networked resources and services are gaining critical importance. The need to assess systematically the networked electronic services and resources is great as increasing amounts of financial resources are dedicated to the Web presence of libraries. This paper aims to address this issue.Design/methodology/approach – This project proposes to measure the impact of networked electronic services, building on MINES for Libraries®, in a scalable way across libraries and consortia to enhance digital library service quality and impact on learning by enabling the future allocation of resources to areas of user‐identified need. Short, standardized web surveys are placed at the point‐of‐use of networked electronic resources and services through a network assessment infrastructure that uses contemporary mechanisms of authentication and access, such as EZproxy, openURL, Shibboleth,...

Assessing the Value and Impact of Digital Content

ABSTRACT During the last decade, library users have responded favorably to the rapid growth in available digital content. In recent years, a number of assessment initiatives related to digital content have surfaced. Among these are projects to standardize the measurement of digital content use, user satisfaction with digital content, cost/benefit analyses, and determination of the demographics and purpose of use of digital content. This paper surveys early attempts by libraries to assess the value and impact of digital content on users. It also explores the potential that digital content offers libraries for understanding library usage, which previously was not available in the traditional print environment.

What Is Different About E-Books?: A MINES for Libraries® Analysis of Academic and Health Sciences Research Libraries' E-Book Usage

Building on the theoretical proposals of Kevin Guthrie and others concerning the transition from print books to e-books in academic and health sciences libraries, this paper presents data collected using the MINES for Libraries® e-resource survey methodology. Approximately 6,000 e-book uses were analyzed from a sample of e-resource usage at thirteen academic and health sciences research libraries between July 2009 and June 2013. The authors report on findings about e-book usage and propose explanations regarding how the adoption path from print books to e-books differs from the growth in use of e-journals and the associated decline in print journals usage.

Library Investment Index – Why is it Important?

The Association of Research Libraries(ARL) has engaged in the implementation of the Task Force on New Ways of Measuring Collections’ recommendations and developed a new index, the Library Investment Index, originally called the ‘Expenditures-Focused Index’ which was published in the Chronicle of Higher Education for the first time in 2007. The Expenditures-Focused Index was renamed the Library Investment Index in 2008 to better reflect the notion that library expenditures are reflective of investments in intellectual, scholarly, and community capital. This paper offers a closer examination of the implications of the Library Investment Index and discusses its importance for the research and wider library community. It addresses both the methodological advantages and limitations as well as the political significance of the development of this index. Introduction In an environment where physical library collections are being replaced or supplemented by terabytes, petabytes, exabytes, zettabytes, and yottabytes of information, it is questionable whether the units of volumes held, volumes added, and serial subscriptions can continue to offer the utility they had in the past. The challenge of measuring collections in new ways gave rise to the work of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Task Force on New Ways of Measuring Collections which engaged into a two year process and moved from debate to action on these issues. The Task Force1 was convened in December 2004 and built on much of the earlier work and debates that engaged the ARL directors during the 1990s.2 During its two-year investigation, the task force systematically collected qualitative feedback through one-on-one interviews with nearly every ARL library director. During the second year of its operation, the task force deployed two top researchers in qualitative and quantitative methodologies, Yvonna Lincoln and Bruce Thompson. Two reports were produced for the ARL community: “Research Libraries as Knowledge Producers: A Shifting Context for Policy and Funding,”3 documenting the results of the qualitative inquiry, and “Some Alternative Quantitative Library Activity Descriptions/Statistics That Supplement the ARL Logarithmic Index,” documenting the results of the quantitative inquiry.4 ARL Task Force on New Ways of Measuring Collections: Interview Results During interviews conducted by Task Force members with more than 100 of the 123 ARL directors in the spring and summer of 2005, a number of key issues surfaced that needed to be addressed. Themes from these interviews highlighted that: Data is not expressing uniqueness of materials; Relevance to teaching, learning, research is not adequately reflected; Collections go beyond printed volumes; Research library is more than collections—it 2008 Library Assessment Conference 148 includes its services and ARL is not telling the story with the ARL Membership Criteria Index; Increase in expenditures for electronic resources is changing collections; Ownership and access are not contradictory approaches; Consortial relationships/cooperative collection development is increasingly important; Shared storage facilities are a necessity; Duplicate serials based on bundling is a huge problem for research libraries since quality control issues vary from product to product; Special collections are not reflected in our current statistics; and ARL Membership Committee does not use the Membership Index exclusively like it used to in the past; it also takes into account qualitative indicators now. Many directors recognized the historical significance of the long standing ARL Statistics5 dataset to show trends, as a way of accounting for university investments, and its importance for comparison and benchmarking. But the voices expressing serious concerns with the ARL Membership Criteria Index were clear in that the Index was misunderstood, misleading, and unhelpful. During the second year of the investigation, Bruce Thompson was engaged and did an exhaustive and thorough analysis of the ARL Statistics data set, attempting to identify additional patterns in the data though factor analysis. In his analysis, he confirmed the statistical validity of the ARL Membership Criteria Index and suggested an improved alternative, what came to be known as the Library Investment Index (or ExpendituresFocused Index). Task Force Recommendations In February 2007, the result of the two year investigation of the Task Force resulted in the formation of an action agenda approved by the ARL Board of Directors, the ARL Task Force on New Ways of Measuring Collections, and the ARL Statistics and Assessment Committee. The action agenda has a number of R&D components but it stands as a practical approach to support research libraries as they are transforming their operations from what has been a 20th century approach into a 21st century approach. The practical and political readiness of different research libraries to adopt new ways of describing their operations varies and is presented in Figure 1. The action agenda offered a wise compromise that keeps what is valuable from the past and also helps libraries move boldly into new territory. A conscious decision was made to maintain the ARL Membership Criteria Index for institutional purposes but not publish it in the Chronicle of Higher Education (The Chronicle) as it contains variables like volumes held, volumes added gross and current serial subscriptions that are undergoing transformative changes. For a stable way of describing libraries, the Task Force relied on the expenditures variables, and promoted and published it in the Chronicle of Higher Education the Library Investment Index. Figure 1. New Ways of Measuring Collections: An Action Agenda Adopted February 2007 1. Reserve use of the current membership criteria index for those occasions when it is needed for consideration of membership issues. 2. Implement an expenditure-focused index. 3. Use the new expenditure-focused index for any public reports, such as in the Chronicle of Higher Education. 4. Begin to develop a services-based index that combines the following three factors: collections, services, and collaborative relationships. 5. Revise definitions for collections-related data categories currently collected and experiment with a variety of new measures, including usage data, strength of collections, and service quality measures to develop a richer set of variables for potential inclusion in the three-factor alternative index (see above). 6. Collect qualitative data to develop a profile of ARL member libraries.