Ed O’Neill is a Senior Research Scientist, OCLC. His research focuses on authority control, subject analysis, database quality, preservation, and collection management. He joined the OCLC Research staff as a Senior Research Scientist in 1983, and served as co-acting Director of Research from 1993 until 1994.
Monday, March 23, Ed will visit Dr. Jane Greenberg’s Knowledge Organization seminar. In the afternoon, he will give a lecture entitled, “Building Collections Cooperatively: Analysis of Collection Use in the OhioLINK Library Consortium.”
Details:
Monday, March 23, 2009, 3:00-4:00 p.m
UNC’s Undergraduate Library, Room 205
Abstract:
With the increasing demand for resources and budget constraints, it is important for librarians to use data to make informed decisions. The OhioLINK consortium provides library resources statewide for 87 academic institutions in Ohio that serve 600,000 faculty, staff, students, and researchers. OhioLINK institutions are a diverse group of academic libraries; large research universities and small community colleges and include both public and private institutions.
The OhioLINK circulation records are the largest and most diverse set of book usage data ever gathered to study usage patterns in academic libraries and is breaking new ground in collection analysis at the consortial level.
The presentation will report on a large-scale study examining consortial usage and lending patterns. The planning, data collection, analysis, and significant findings will be discussed. The research questions to addressed include: 1) What types of materials are not used or are underused? 2) Are there similar usage and collection patterns between the large research universities and the small community colleges? 3) Are there too few books in some disciplines and too many in others? 4) Are the books appropriately distributed across institutions? 5) What books are the best candidates for remote or compact storage or alternate formats such as e-books?