Strategic Actions, Goals and Accomplishments

Acquisitions & Collection Development/Collections Strategy Team: Key Activities and Accomplishments 

Owned by Nancy Turner
Last updated: Dec 04, 2020
5 min read

FY 19-20

  • Re-established print acquisitions workflows after the move from Paley to Charles Library
  • Undertook a current periodicals and continuations review, dropping some print and low-performing subscriptions, and moving some print to e-only - net savings of ~$70K.
  • Set up Counter 5 SUSHI profiles in Alma.
  • Began licensing online video games.
  • During COVID-19 crisis, provided 90+ new or expanded temporary e-resources to assist students and faculty in the new online-only environment
  • Transitioned department to entirely off-site operations during COVID-19 campus shut-down.
  • Conducted analysis and planning for expected $500K budget cut for FY21.
  • Laid plans for switching from our existing Primo Content Index to Ex Libris' new Central Discovery Index. These are the indicies that power our discovery environment in Library Search.
  • In coordination with the Scholarly Communications Strategic Steering Team, hosted a series of TULUP discussions about Temple's Pathways to Open Access. (CSST)
  • NOTABLE NEW ACQUISITIONS
    • Oxford Scholarship Online
    • 50 new Adam Matthew databases

FY 18-19

Note: there is significant overlap between CSST work and Acquisitions & Collection Development department work. Even if not specifically noted, many of the activities below were discussed in CSST meetings even if implementation took place at the departmental level.

  • Negotiated a new Elsevier ScienceDirect contract which saves $375K per year while maximizing our ongoing access to Elsevier journals.
  • Renegotiated Springer ebook package, saving $115K per year.
  • $50K in further reductions to under-utilized resources.
  • Implemented new “purchase on demand” infrastructure in Library Search (constructed by LTD) which provides a mechanism to quickly (24-48 hour turnaround) make evidence-based purchase decisions for ebooks from publishers that do not allow direct demand driven acquisition.
  • Arranged new evidence-based agreement for Taylor & Francis ebooks that provides us with access to all T&F hosted ebook content from 2018 onward.
  • Agreed to support the Global Press Archive, a cooperative agreement between the Center for Research Libraries and Eastview Information Services to digitize 2,000+ international newspapers comprising 30 million+ pages. Some of this content will be provided open access to the world, while some will be limited to project supporters like Temple.
  • Fully integrated the Health Science Libraries’ purchasing and invoice payment processes into the Paley's acquisitions function.
  • Worked closely with LTD to integrate the A-Z Database List directly into Library Search results.
  • CSST - A new collection development policy was completed.
  • CSST - As part of the Hathitrust Shared Print Program, TUL agreed to keep approximately 25,000 monographs for at least 25 years on behalf of the Hathitrust membership and the wider library community.
  • Completed pre-move survey and withdrawal of duplicate books in Paley.
  • Identified and withdrew long runs of government documents that are available online.
  • Contributed significant staff time to move-related projects throughout the year, including green-dotting, size-labelling, and triage of materials unable to be loaded in the ASRS.
  • Reviewed and made decisions to keep, scan, and/or recycle all departmental paper documents.

FY 17-18

  • Successfully managed the roll-out and implementation of Alma Acquisitions and Alma’s electronic resource functions. This required re-creating, revising, and documenting just about every existing acquisitions and e-resources workflow and then troubleshooting the many problems that cropped up throughout the year. Paley Acquisitions also served as a training resource for other TUL units needing to implement acquisitions or serials functionality in Alma.
  • Used Alma to setup automatic harvesting of vendor-provided e-resources usage statistics using the SUSHI protocol. This had been a long-standing departmental goal.
  • Successfully migrated our primary ebook platform from MyiLibrary to Ebook Central (EBC). The new EBC platform will provide much greater selection and purchasing flexibility going forward.
  • Years of work compiling bound journal de-selection candidates came to fruition as approximately 80,000 volumes were removed from the collection. A further ~20K volumes were identified for removal over the summer of 2018.
  • Researched and processed a steady stream of materials coming from the barcode project, art book deduplication project, and regular gift book donations. Worked with Library Technology to integrate Shibboleth authentication into our existing EzProxy authentication mechanism.
  • Worked closely with Library Technology Development on preparations for the new Blacklight-based discovery service, focusing particularly on the integration of electronic resources and linking mechanism into the new system.
  • Introduced a Jira-based system for tracking internal Acquisitions tasks related to e-resource issues.
  • Re-introduced a regular process for reviewing missing books for possible replacement purchase.
  • Introduced a pilot project that analyzes assigned course textbooks to determine possible unlimited use ebook purchase options. Approximately 40 titles were licensed for Spring semester 2018.
  • Established a new procedure for reviewing ebook titles that fall out of subscription or DDA packages and purchasing those titles that meet the criteria.
  • The Collection Strategy Steering Team (CSST) was established in the Spring of 2018 and charged with providing strategic oversight to TUL’s collection activities. CSST scoped out the many existing or possible TUL activities that could fall under the collections umbrella and drafted some preliminary goals. These goals focused on

1) the creation of a collection development policy,

2) strategies for controlling collection costs and establishing funding priorities,

3) space management (to be overseen primarily by the Physical Collections Working Group),

4) assessment, and

5) organizational models & workflow for materials selection.

Longer range goals included:

1) exploring possible retrospective shared print arrangements,

2) exploring prospective collaborative collection development, and

3) strengthening resource sharing partnerships.

  • Under aegis of the CSST, established a working group charged with drafting a collection development policy.
  • A new Palci working group, that includes representation from TUL, was formed to discuss possibilities for a Palci shared print framework that could enable informed de-selection of some duplicated materials while ensuring overall Palci-wide retention of those materials.
  • TUL joined the HathiTrust Shared Print Phase 2 program which may lead to commitments in FY19 to retain certain materials on behalf of the Hathitrust collective collection.
  • Worked with the Physical Collections Working Group on ongoing discussion and analysis of various aspect of the upcoming move to the Charles Library.
  • Approved funding from the collections budget for a new Library Data Grants program.
  • Conducted in-depth analysis of Elsevier and Taylor & Francis journal “big deal” usage and costs with the expectation of moving away from the “big deal” package arrangement in FY19 renewals.
  • Regularly assessed usage/overlap/cost for subscription renewals, often leading to push back with vendors having unacceptably high renewal costs. One renewal example resulted in a $7,500 cost reduction. Another complex series of negotiations resulted in the acquisition of two very expensive new resources, Access World News and Westlaw Campus Research, at effectively no net cost to us after securing a very deep price reduction for a large competing news subscription and canceling another lightly used news product.
  • Due to an unsustainably high growth in usage and cost of unmediated Kanopy DDA streaming video, we greatly reduced the number of titles included in the unmediated DDA program and moved the remainder of titles to a mediated DDA program.
  • Significant new acquisitions included:

--A large Ebscohost ebook package of ~200K titles

--Access World News

--American Antiquarian Society Historical Periodicals

--ASTM Compass

--Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections

--SHAFR Guide Online

--Westlaw Campus Research

--Wiley-Blackwell journal backfiles