Suzanne D. Gyeszly

netLibrary : a new direction in collection development

Texas A&M University (TAMU) Libraries is a member of two consortiums that include academic and public libraries. Both consortiums purchased access to netLibrary e‐books for their members. Approximately 92 libraries within the Amigos Library Services consortium jointly purchased roughly 10,000 e‐books. The Texas State Library and Archives Commission (TSLAC), which oversees a consortium of approximately 700 state‐supported libraries, purchased roughly 9,000 e‐books. TAMU purchased an additional 193 e‐books for its own collection. The purpose of this project was to explore the use of netLibrary as an electronic collection development tool. The Library Extranet, netLibrary’s data‐gathering software, provided information necessary to compare usage based on subject categories. Data was cumulated for a total of 270 days comparing TAMU’s usage to that of the combined consortiums. Final analysis and results are provided. Collection development librarians will use these results to fine‐tune the future growth of TAMU and consortium collections.

Electronic or paper journals? Budgetary, collection development, and user satisfaction questions

The escalating price of the rapidly growing number of electronic journals, databases, indexes, and books, along with traditionally published print subscriptions and monographs, will soon force library administrators and collection development officers to make decisions between electronic or print products in the new millennium. The increasing costs of the dual format subscriptions or indexes are unfeasible and perhaps even unnecessary from the users’ point of view in the disciplines of political science and economics. The researcher compared the annual subscription prices and the percentage increases of the 203 core printed journals with their electronic counterparts in the disciplines of political science and economics during the 1998‐2000 academic years. The complete list of electronically available titles was identified and priced, then titles costing greater than

Electronic and traditional sources for a newly established branch library: product availability and user preferences

500 were separated. The electronic use statistics were examined for the expensive serials, based upon the numbers of hits cumulated by user...

The role of document delivery and collection management for an electronic user clientele

For libraries, the trend toward electronic publishing of journals holds out the promise of greater availability of these materials without regard to physical location either of the collection or the patron. The establishment of the Policy Sciences and Economics Library (PSEL), as a branch of the Sterling C. Evans Library at Texas A&M University, was an opportunity to test this hypothesis. In concert with faculty from the departments of political science, economics and the George Bush School of Government and Public Service, reference and collection development librarians developed a core collection for this facility. The librarians hoped to be able to rely primarily on electronic journals to satisfy initial faculty research needs. However, a review of journals requested by the faculty served at PSEL revealed that not enough of these titles were available electronically. Further, what was available electronically often did not include the full‐text, cover‐to‐cover completeness necessary. Faculty preference...

Qatar's Education City's university libraries: patrons, collections, and services

Fee‐based electronic resources such as full‐text journals, databases, abstracts, and indexes are widely available for library users. However, scholarly books and reference sources are usually not available in electronic format, and particular disciplines are not significantly represented by available electronic sources. Traditional document delivery serves as a complement to electronic resources, and offers patrons timely access to materials not available in electronic format. The data represent document delivery requests during the academic years 1997‐1999 at the Policy Sciences and Economics Library (PSEL), a branch library of the Texas A&M University General Libraries. The requests were sorted by academic departments, user types, call numbers, and type of material. The statistics served two primary purposes. First, frequently requested items were ordered for the library’s permanent collection. Second, the data were compared to electronic resource usage statistics to determine which resources best serve...