ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


C&RL News ■ July/August 2002 / 495

newsCollege & Research Libraries

Five y ears ago . . .

Comparison charts as a public relations tool
by Janet R. Cottrell and Frank M. Wojcik

T
he escalating pace of change occurring 
in most academic libraries can make it 
difficult to determine the actual effects of 

efforts. Preparing a summary chart compar­
ing current information resources and services 
with those offered five years ago is an easy 
way to help patrons, administrators, and staff 
see the overall effects over time.

Whether the issue is reelecting someone 
for public office or assessing library and in­
formation services, the question people re­
ally want answered is “Are we better off now 
than we were five years ago?” In the fast­
changing world of academic librarianship, it 
is easy to lose sight of such a basic question. 
Our accelerated rate of change, our continual 
evolution, and our preoccupation with the 
here and now sometimes make it difficult to 
step back and determine the actual effects of 
our initiatives—to see the big picture.

However, such assessment is crucial. Few 
libraries can afford to implement new initia­
tives indefinitely without some indication of 
their worth. Librarians who make no effort to 
assess the value of changes they have imple­
mented risk having their patrons and funders 
form their own opinions in the absence of 
accurate information.

Assessment methods
Assessment methods vary in terms of scope, 
difficulty, expense, and usefulness. Perhaps 
the most ambitious and com prehensive

our

method is outcome assessment, in which the 
impact on student and faculty is measured in 

 terms of effectiveness, quality, and so on. 
These measures can be difficult to develop, 
implement, and interpret, and frequently re­
quire hard-to-gather longitudinal data. Atti- 
tudinal assessments, such as focus groups or 
satisfaction surveys, are another useful mea­
sure. They can be relatively inexpensive to 
develop and deploy, and their interpretation 
can be fairly straightforward, but they are, in 
the end, measures of opinion, not fact.

Another tool to assess the value of pro­
grammatic or resource changes—a very 
simple and inexpensive one—is a well-for­
matted comparison chart highlighting factual 
differences in services, collections, access, 
or other measures between two points in 
time.

The topics that any given library chooses 
to highlight will depend on the kinds of 
changes made in recent years, but in general 
the chart should reflect areas of dramatic 
change, features whose introduction may have 
been controversial, topics that are particularly 
important to the library’s mission, and so on. 
Typical topics that might be highlighted in­
clude changes in the physical collection 
(types, amounts, usage); changes in the online 
collection; changes of physical size or lay­
out; changes in staffing, hours, or services 
provided; and changes in consortial arrange­
ments or management structure.

About the authors

Janet R. Cottrell is director o f  inform ation access, Library and Inform ation Services, and Frank M. Wojcik is director o f 
inform ation resources. Library and Inform ation Services, a t Kenyon College, e-mail: cottrellj@kenyon.edu and 
wojcikf@kenyon.edu

mailto:cottrellj@kenyon.edu
mailto:wojcikf@kenyon.edu


4 9 6  / C&RL News ■ July/August 2002

The "Five Years A g o " chart
When Frank Wojcik, one of the directors of 
Kenyon College’s merged library and comput­
ing services organization, known as Library and 
Information Services, created a comparison 
chart in 2000, he highlighted the tremendous 
expansion in print and online materials now 
accessible through the college’s consortial 
agreements1 (see Table 1). The differences over 
time in the scope of print monograph titles, 
journal titles, and databases speak for them­
selves.2 The chart includes other striking dif­
ferences, such as an increase in the number of 
degreed librarians on the staff. Finally, as a 
sort of teaser, he included without comment a

statistic reflecting the decrease in materials 
checked out of the library; this entry never fails 
to start an interesting discussion.

First prepared for a board of trustees sub­
committee meeting, Kenyon’s “Five Years 
Ago” chart has served in many settings. The 
chart, or information from it, has been used 
in faculty advisory committee meetings, a di­
vision-wide staff meeting, and an interview 
in a campus publication. It is posted on the 
division’s Web site and has come up in dis­
cussion with prospective employees. Facts 
from the chart have been pulled out for use 
in “Did you know . . . ” signs posted near the 
reference and current periodicals areas.

Table 1:
Changes in information resources 

at Kenyon College in the last five years (May 2000)

Five y e a rs ago , the lib rary h ad  a  co m puterized  card 
catalo g , p ro v id in g a ccess to K enyon’s b oo k co llec­
tion o f 300,000 titles.

F iv e  y e a r s  a g o , th e  l ib r a r y  o f f e r e d  O CLC’s 
FirstSearch, Lexis/Nexis, an d  14 CD-ROM-based d a ­
tab ases. G en erally, search in g  these d atab ases h ad  
to b e  p erform ed in the library, an d  often the search 
h ad  to b e  co n d u cted  b y  a  librarian.

Five y e a rs ago , the lib rary sub scrib ed  to a p p ro x i­
m a tely  1,250 p erio d icals an d  h ad  b e g u n  c an celin g  
m an y  titles b e c a u s e  o f b u d g e ta ry  constraints.

Five y e a rs ag o , K enyon’s lib rary m ad e h e a v y  use 
o f staff-m ediated in terlib rary lo an  services to p ro ­
v id e a c c ess to m aterials not lo c a lly  a v ailab le . This 
p ro cess w a s  slo w  an d  lab o r intensive.

T od ay, the lib rary h as a n e w  W eb -b ased  catalo g, 
w h ic h  in clu d es lo cal K enyon h old in gs, p lu s access 
to the CONSORT an d  O hioLink co llection s: a  total 
o f 7 m illio n  titles. B esid es u sin g  the catalo g  as a 
fin d in g a id  for these co llection s, the K enyon co m ­
m un ity is a b le  to lin k  d irectly to th o usan d s o f full- 
text electron ic jo urnals an d  b o o k s from the cata­
log.

T oday, w e  offer m ore than  125 m ajor d atab ases. 
W ithin the p ast y e a r  w e  h av e  a d d e d  su ch  titles as 
the ATLA R eligion Index, ABC P olitical Scien ce, 
CIS H istory U niverse, IT K now led ge, H um anities 
A bstracts, INSPEC, a n d  m an y  others. T hese cita­
tion d a tab ase s lin k  to th e electro n ic full-text o f ar­
ticles, w h e re v e r p o ssib le. T hrough our patro n  a u ­
th en ticatio n  so ftw a re, m em b ers o f th e K enyon 
com m unity can search most o f these databases from 
a n y w h e re  in  the w o rld .

T oday, the lib rary sub scrib es to m ore than 4,500 
p erio d icals, in clu d in g  m ore than 3,200 jo urn als in 
electron ic format. Som e o f o ur electron ic su b scrip ­
tions h av e  rein stated  the p a p e r sub scrip tion s w e  
c a n c e le d  in the 1990s.

T oday, K enyon co ntin ues to u se  m ed iated  in terli­
b ra ry  lo an , b ut to a  m uch  sm aller exten t than  b e ­
fore. Library u sers are a b le  to b orro w  b o o k s d i­
re ctly  from CONSORT, O hioLink, an d  th e Center 
for R esearch Libraries w ith o u t the assistan ce o f li­
b ra ry staff. D elivery o f th ese item s tak es o n ly  a 
fe w  d ays. In ad d itio n , o u r e x p a n d e d  jo urn al h o ld ­
in gs m ak e  us less d e p en d e n t on other institutions 
for access to p erio d ical literature.

(continued on next base)



C&RL News ■ July/August 2002 / 497

Prepared fairly easily using data collected 
for routine annual surveys, the chart has long 
repaid the effort invested in its preparation. As 
a concise information piece, a quick reference 
chart, and a prompt for substantive discussion, 
the “Five Years Ago” chart has served us well.

Notes
1. Kenyon College is a member of the Five 

Colleges of Ohio consortium, which also in­
cludes the College of Wooster, Denison Uni­
versity, Oberlin College, and Ohio Wesleyan 
University. The Five Colleges collaborate on 
an information literacy project, a foreign lan­
guage technology project, a remote library stor­
age facility, a cooperative collection develop­
ment project, and CONSORT—a shared inte­
grated library system. Kenyon also belongs to 
OhioLINK, a statewide consortium including 
the libraries of 80 colleges and universities. 
OhioLINK’s direct borrowing program provides 
access to more than 31 million library items

statewide, and many of Kenyon’s digital infor­
mation resources, electronic journals, electronic 
books, digital images, and research databases 
are acquired through OhioLINK’s cooperative 
acquisitions programs.

2. Obviously the numbers on the chart pre­
sented here represent a moment in time in 2000, 
and many statistics have changed dramatically 
since then. For example, we now have access 
to more than 5,700 journals and 24,000 elec­
tronic books, and w e employ 14 librarians. 
Digital images, which were not mentioned in 
the chart, have become an important part of 
our collection. We are in the process of updat­
ing the chart to reflect these new trends. It is 
always possible, given current economic con­
ditions, that we will see a contraction of li­
brary budgets and that consortial purchasing 
power, in particular, may be adversely affected. 
Also, due to marketplace variables, some ven­
dors mentioned in the chart, e.g., IT Knowl­
edge, have not remained viable. ■

Table 1 (continued)
Five y e a rs  ago , K enyon h a d  d e v e lo p e d  an  e x te n ­
siv e slid e  lib ra ry  in sup p o rt o f the c o lle g e  curricu­
lum .

Five y e a rs  ag o , K enyo n ’s G overnm ent D ocum ents 
collection  w a s c atalo g e d  selectiv ely; m uch o f it w a s 
not c a ta lo g e d  at all. This m ad e th e co llectio n  diffi­
cult to a c c e ss b y  o u r users.

Five y e a rs  a g o , lib rary u sers a lw a y s  h a d  to visit the 
lib rary in o rd er to u se co urse reserv e m aterials.

Five y e a rs  ag o , K enyo n  e m p lo y e d  eigh t lib rarian s.

Five y e a rs  ago , a ll o f o u r lib rary ca ta lo g in g  w a s 
d o n e  lo c a lly , u sin g  OCLC as a  cata lo g in g  resource.

Five y e a rs  ago , the lib ra ry  c irc u la te d  m o re than 
77,000 item s to the K enyon com m unity.

T od ay, th e slid e  lib ra ry  is e v e n  la rg e r an d  o ur slid e  
c o llectio n  is s u p p lem en ted  w ith  m ore th an  50,000 
d igital im ages from the OhioLink Digital M edia C en­
ter. L ocally, w e  a re  p la n n in g  im a g e  d igitizatio n  
projects an d  im p ro ved  a c c ess to our en tire im a g e  
co llection.

T oday, every' n e w ly  arrived G overnm ent D ocum ent 
is ca ta lo g e d . In ad d itio n , K enyon is p articip atin g 
in an  a w a rd -w in n in g  h isto rical do cum en ts c a ta lo g ­
in g p ro ject w ith  the o th er Five C o lleg es o f Ohio 
lib raries. A ccess to do cum ents is e a s ie r an d  m ore 
efficien t than  e v e r before.

T od ay, K enyon has e sta b lish e d  an electro n ic re ­
serv es system , w h ic h  the co m m un ity c an  access 
from  a n y w h e re , at a n y  tim e.

T od ay, K enyon e m p lo y s 13 lib rarian s. T his n u m ­
b e r is up  from five lib rarian s tw o  y e a rs  ago.

T od ay, m uch  o f o u r cata lo g in g  is d o n e lo ca lly , but 
so m e is o u tso u rced  an d  so m e is d o n e in co o p e ra ­
tion w ith  O hioLink a n d  th e Five C o lleg es o f Ohio 
consortia.

T oday, total circulation for the y e a r, in clu d in g  item s 
b o rro w ed  from  O hioLink an d  CONSORT, w ill to­
tal a p p ro x im a tely  68,000 item s. This y e a r  K enyon 
b o rro w ers w ill b orro w  m ore than  25 p ercen t of 
their b o o k s from  CONSORT an d  O hioLink.



4 9 8  / C&RL News ■ July/August 2002