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Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 2008, 3:3
3
Evidence Based Library and Information Practice
Article
Three Evidence Based Methods to Compensate for a Lack of Subject Background
when Ordering Chemistry Monographs
Robert A. Wright
Manager
Tuttle Neighborhood Library, Houston Public Library
Houston, Texas, United States of America
Email: Robert.Wright@cityofhouston.net
Received : 31 January 2008 Accepted : 06 August 2008
© 2008 Wright. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use,
distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Objective – The aim of this article is to present evidence based methods for the
selection of chemistry monographs, particularly for librarians lacking a background
in chemistry. These methods will be described in detail, their practical application
illustrated, and their efficacy tested by analyzing circulation data.
Methods – Two hundred and ninety-five chemistry monographs were selected
between 2005 and 2007 using rigorously-applied evidence based methods involving
the Library's integrated library system (ILS), Google, and SciFinder Scholar. The
average circulation rate of this group of monographs was compared to the average
circulation rate of 254 chemistry monographs selected between 2002 and 2004 when
the methods were not used or were in an incomplete state of development.
Results – Circulations/month were on average 9% greater in the cohort of
monographs selected with the rigorously-applied evidence based methods. Further
statistical analysis, however, finds that this result can not be attributed to the
different application of these methods.
Conclusion – The methods discussed in this article appear to provide an evidence
base for the selection of chemistry monographs, but their application does not
change circulation rates in a statistically significant way. Further research is needed
Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 2008, 3:3
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to determine if this lack of statistical significance is real or a product of the organic
development and application of these methods over time, making definitive
comparisons difficult.
Introduction
It is often the case that the possession of a
science degree of any kind leads librarians
to subject responsibilities of a broadly
scientific or technical nature. For example, a
librarian with a bachelor’s degree in geology
might be charged with subject
responsibilities for physics or engineering in
addition to the geosciences. In the author’s
case, he collected materials for pharmacy
and chemistry, areas of study related in
different, incomplete ways to biology, the
degree he earned as an undergraduate in
1988 and applied in research settings for 5
years after that.
Pharmacy, chemistry, and biology as fields
of knowledge certainly all describe natural
phenomena from a molecular standpoint.
For instance, drug-receptor interactions,
chemical reactions, and the processes of
DNA transcription and translation all occur
at this level. But this foundation for
understanding is only useful for making
broad, limited connections among these
subjects. The knowledge that molecules are
the common actors is a far cry from
understanding the intricacies of the clinical
pharmacology of cancer drugs, chemical
vapor deposition polymerization, or DNA
damage and repair.
While librarians need not know as much as
graduate students or research faculty about
a subject, a rigorous academic background
ending in a degree would seem an ideal
preparation for serving their information
needs. Such a degree, whether at the
bachelor, master, or Ph.D. level, enables the
librarian to share an essential intellectual
landscape with his patrons. This landscape
consists of key signposts or terminology,
central ideas or organizing principles,
distinct conceptual geographies or sub-
categories, and the palpable
interconnections between all these features.
The aim of this paper is to add to the
existing set of techniques for collection
building for those librarians who are
responsible for acquiring chemistry
monographs without the benefit of a
chemistry degree. This paper presents a
case study of the experience of one librarian
collecting in one subject area at a particular
university. These techniques, however, are
also generally applicable to subject
librarians with minimal content-specific
educational background, regardless of the
field for which selection choices must be
made.
Literature Review of General Collection
Building Methods
The scope and depth of coverage of
collection development and management in
the library science literature is significant. A
number of monographs published in the
past ten years address general principles,
guidelines, and universally-applicable best
practices (Gorman and Miller; Jenkins and
Morley; Clayton and Gorman; Mack;
Johnson; Evans and Saponaro). A further
set of recent monographs relates to
collection building in a variety of specific
subject areas, including the humanities
(Owens); the health sciences (Richards and
Eakin); literature in English (Day and
Wortman); music (Maple and Morrow;
McCants); area studies (Hazen and
Spohrer); and business (Bergart and Lewis).
Finally, the literature also includes
reproductions of collection development
policies (Sylvia; McAbee, Bevis, Poe, and
Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 2008, 3:3
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Whitesel). These policies typically focus on
deselection criteria and the appropriate
types and formats of materials to collect.
They are meant to offer general guidelines,
and so do not address the kinds of questions
facing subject selectors in their day-to-day
work, such as, “Should the acquisition of
books on organometallic chemistry be given
more priority than the acquisition of books
on electrochemistry?”
Research which evaluates collections with
materials-based and usage-based criteria
offers broadly applicable methods to
identify collection weaknesses and future
acquisitions. Materials-based research
compares collections to an exemplary
collection or to lists of titles obtained from
respected, representative sources, such as
textbook bibliographies (Stelk and
Lancaster) or citations from teachers’ guides
(Ching and Chennupati). Usage-based
research examines circulation data from
existing collections to determine broad areas
of patron use. These studies range from
global examinations of the use of collections
over time (Montgomery, Bulick, Fetterman,
and Kent; Burrell; Kao, Chang, and Lin); to
evaluations of recent usage of monographs
on general subjects (Fenske; Kraemer); to the
use of interlibrary loan statistics to show
collection weaknesses (Khalil).
Another broadly-applicable area of research
in collection development and management
relates to the development of expert systems
or decision support systems. This research
seeks to build systems that can standardize
and automate best practices in order to
streamline the selection process and
improve its output (Sowell; Johnston and
Weckert; Uzoka and Ijatuyi). These systems
are either weak at incorporating subject
content into the decision-making process or
fail to include actual usage data.
Literature Review of Collection Building
Methods Applied to Chemistry
Sources in the literature that specifically
address the challenges of chemistry
monograph selection can be grouped for
convenience into two categories. The first of
these sources are lists of recommended titles
which can be based on article length (Sapp;
Culp; Rudman) or book length (Bottle and
Rowland; Maizell; Douville) and feature
annotations of recent works in a variety of
categories. Titles, authors, prices, and ISBNs
are provided to aid the selector. These lists
evaluate and recommend specific titles
which are topical, current, and essential. As
such, they are quite helpful. Their scope is
limited, however, and by their nature they
are decontextualized. Because of their “top
ten” nature, these lists feature books that
would be appropriate for any academic
library with a chemistry collection.
A second category features sources that
address context-specific strategies for
selection. These include selection based on
textbook citations (Powell), citations from
faculty-published scholarship (Farina and
Snyder 146), direct consultation with faculty
(Barnett), and the use of approval plans
(Farina and Snyder 141-42).
Selection based on textbook citations reflects
the recommended readings that both faculty
and enterprising students will encounter in
the course of study and teaching. These
readings, however, are likely to be much
more useful for faculty instruction than for
faculty research. On the other hand,
selection based on citations from faculty
scholarship could be quite valuable for
faculty research. Monographs, however, are
not frequently cited in the chemistry
research literature (Barnett).
Direct consultation with faculty members
could ensure that their instructional and
research needs for monographs are met.
Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 2008, 3:3
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Only a few faculty members, however,
respond to requests for selection
suggestions, and they are often unaware of
the holdings at The University of Houston
Libraries (Library). As well, suggestions
from faculty are often already part of the
Library’s collection.
Approval plans are arrangements that
libraries make with vendors for the
provision of recently published books, as
well as electronic or printed descriptions
(called “forms”) of current or forthcoming
titles. Books that fit an agreed-upon set of
criteria are automatically sent by the vendor
to the library for review. The books are then
either selected by subject librarians for
inclusion in the library’s collection or sent
back to the vendor. Subject selectors
likewise examine the electronic or printed
forms and decide either to discard them or
use them as a means for ordering the books
they describe. The Library uses Blackwell’s
Book Services as its approval plan vendor.
Approval plans offer the advantage of
timely, automatic delivery of monographs
and monograph descriptions based on a
specific set of criteria. Sets of criteria form
profiles of subjects such as chemistry. The
selection derived from an approval plan
profile depends upon the degree to which
the profile can be calibrated for specificity
by the selector. For instance, the vendor
may use the criterion “electrochemistry”
when sending books or forms to a library.
For a library serving patrons that are most
interested in the electrochemistry of
polymers, this criterion will often prove too
general and result in books and forms being
sent which are of marginal value to this
library.
Aims
As discussed above, a biology degree with
minimal chemistry course work offers
limited fluency in the lexicon of chemistry
and only a basic understanding of its
underlying principles. Fluency is greater in
areas of interdisciplinary study such as
biochemistry, biomolecular science,
environmental science, and medicinal
chemistry, but the bulk of chemical
specialties are beyond this level of fluency.
A limited acquisitions budget makes this
large gap in knowledge a serious difficulty.
For without the ability to buy every
currently published chemistry monograph,
actual purchasing choices must be made
from an array of sources, including:
approval plans, Choice reviews, and
publishers’ catalogs. Informing these
choices are the questions, “Will these books
be relevant to the needs of faculty and
students?” and “What evidence can I offer
in support of relevance?” Three
methodologies are presented below that
provide evidence to make these choices
more relevant. These methods will be
described in detail, their practical
application illustrated, and their efficacy
tested by analyzing circulation data.
Methods
The Integrated Library System (ILS) Method
The Integrated Library System (ILS) Method
refers to the strategic use of ILS-derived,
title-level circulation statistics for making
collection decisions. The ILS referred to is
Millennium, Version 6.0 from Innovative
Interfaces, Inc., this being the one used at
the Library. Other ILSs likely have the same
functionality.
The Search/Holds feature in the Millennium
circulation module searches the Library’s
holdings using a variety of fields. The title,
author, and keyword fields may be searched
as needed depending on the level of
specificity required for an evidence based
selection decision. A title search may reveal
an earlier edition in the holdings. The
circulation information for this edition,
Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 2008, 3:3
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including the checked out, renewed, and
last out fields in its Millennium record
provides sufficient evidence upon which to
base the purchase of the newer edition. A
new edition of a monograph is ordered if
the old edition has been checked out an
average of once/year or has been checked
out in the past two years. These decisions
can be justified in the first case because of
the book’s long-term use and in the second
case because of a recent spike in use.
For first edition titles, one or more keyword
searches are performed to determine the
relevance of the book. Poor circulation of
recent subject-related titles indicates that the
book in question is of marginal value to the
collection. Recent circulation of old titles
indicates the need for more recent titles, so
the prospective purchase would be made in
this case.
This method was used to select Handbook of
Size Exclusion Chromatography and Related
Techniques. A search of the ILS revealed a
heavily-used previous edition of this title,
which had circulated ten times since 1995
and was currently checked out. A search of
the ILS is an ideal starting point for
prospective titles that are also subsequent
editions. It can often reveal the performance
of earlier editions, which is sufficient
evidence for a selection decision.
A clear advantage of this method of making
selection decisions is that, assuming the ILS
software is functioning properly, the
selector has evidence that books similar to
the one he is considering for purchase either
have or have not been checked out by
patrons from his library. Circulation
statistics from these related books are akin
to results of experiments in which books
were placed before patrons and a specific
response was measured (i.e. did patrons
check them out or not?). This evidence
provides some certainty that the
experiments the selector sets into motion
with his new acquisitions will yield the
same results, and that he was justified in not
performing some experiments at all.
This method is not necessarily effective at
identifying titles that, if purchased, would
fill a new or re-emerging pedagogical or
research need. This may be because patrons
choose not to check out books that are
topically relevant but are judged by them to
be out-dated. Also, patrons may not check
out books on a given topic because no such
books exist in the collection. The ILS
method might help in some of these cases if
the subject matter of existing books in the
collection is closely related to that of the
book in question, since then circulation data
are available. But for monographs whose
topics are historically new or only distantly
related to topics covered by the existing
collection, the ILS approach will not be
helpful. In this case, testing for the utility of
prospective purchases requires different
methods.
The Google-Mediated Method
Google-mediated searching of faculty and
departmental web pages uses Google’s
advanced search feature. Key terms taken
from book titles, descriptions in publishers’
catalogs, descriptors from approval plan
forms, etc. are entered as phrases or
individual words. The search is then limited
to the departmental domain name. In this
case, “chem.uh.edu” is used to limit the
search to the Department of Chemistry’s
website at the University of Houston. The
results of this kind of search vary. They
may include course syllabi, learning
outcomes, PowerPoint presentations,
descriptions of research interests on faculty
members’ departmental and personal
homepages, e-prints, post-prints,
bibliographies, and curricula vitae.
The first edition of a book published in 2003,
entitled Computational Materials Science of
Polymers, was selected using this method. A
Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 2008, 3:3
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search was performed using the terms
“computational,” “materials science,” and
“polymer.” The ten results were a variety of
documents related to the UH Department of
Chemistry, including: one syllabus, one set
of course notes, one description of the
undergraduate program, two faculty web
pages describing research interests, and five
full-text journal articles in PDF format
maintained by faculty authors on their web
pages. In the majority of these cases, the
search terms lacked sufficient proximity to
one another to make the results relevant. A
typical example of unrelated terms found by
the search above is the “course notes” result,
which summarizes the occurrence of the
terms in bold in its text as “…b. You do not
have to read all of this material. …See
Science, 266, 1359 (1994…vii) A nice
computational example is provided by the
reaction of ketene (CH 2=C=O …”
The result that did provide the needed
evidence was one of the faculty web pages
outlining research activity. On this web
page, which has since been updated, is a
numbered list of research interests. Among
these topics were two of particular
importance, captured in the relevant
summary of the site as “… (6) Development
of computer simulation methodology for
material science and biotechnology. (7)
Polymer correlations in composite
materials. …” (Pettitt). The favorable
impression given by this summary was
confirmed by a visit to the site itself, which
made clear that this faculty member’s
research involves computational methods
applied to polymeric materials. The book
was ordered on the strength of this
evidence.
This method has the virtue of connecting
directly to faculty research and teaching
interests, which, in the case of faculty
homepages, are often articulated in
descriptive paragraphs and overviews.
These narratives provide scope and context
for faculty research. Since they are written
at a more general level than, for example, a
journal article abstract, they address broader
concepts, are dense with key terms and
phrases, and make connections between
concepts or fields of study. This means that
these narratives are more easily
comprehensible to the uninitiated, including
librarians with little or no subject
background. This also means that these text
and content rich pages are good candidates
for keyword searching by search engines
such as Google.
While Google-mediated searching of a
chemistry department’s web pages can yield
a considerable amount of unique
information upon which to base monograph
acquisition decisions, this information may
be both incomplete and out-of-date. These
problems are related to the decentralized
nature of web authoring on the UH
Department of Chemistry’s web site
(Chemistry). Much of the content on this
site is maintained by individual faculty
members. As one might expect of a site run
by busy researchers and administrators,
faculty-specific content may not always be
kept updated.
To test this assumption, the faculty pages
listed at
were
examined, excluding those pages from
adjunct and joint faculty, emeritus faculty,
and visiting professors and lecturers. These
pages were excluded because their owners
were either part of another department with
different web-authoring norms (joint
faculty); were less professionally active
(emeritus faculty); or were, due to
affiliation, perhaps less likely to actively
maintain their sites (adjunct faculty, visiting
professors, and lecturers). While no “last
updated” or “last modified” date is part of
these pages, dated information listed in both
the “Honors, Fellowships, etc.” and the
“Recent Publications” sections of these sites
Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 2008, 3:3
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was assumed to be a reliable measure of
when the pages were last updated. The
results of this analysis illustrate the varying
levels of attention faculty authors pay to
their sites. As of July 13, 2007, 50% (13) of
the faculty pages had last been updated five
years ago or more and only 15% (4) had
been updated in 2007. See Table 1: Faculty
Web Page Updating in the UH Department
of Chemistry.
To confirm that a substantial number of
these web pages were out-of-date, author
searches were performed on July 18, 2007 in
SciFinder Scholar, a comprehensive
database of the chemical literature. These
searches showed that a great deal of content
in the form of published article titles was
missing from faculty web pages. After
comparing the publication lists from these
pages with the SciFinder Scholar search
results, it was found that only 19% (5) of
them were up-to-date and reflected the
actual published output of faculty members.
The SciFinder Scholar Method
Searching SciFinder Scholar (Scholar) was
the third method used for collection
building. Keywords derived from book
descriptions were entered in the “Research
Topic” search of the “Explore” feature of
Scholar, which accepts natural language
queries and provides users with different
result sets based on different combinations
of key terms. The results were limited
before the fact by entering “Department of
Chemistry, University of Houston” in the
“Company name” filter. The results
obtained by this method included journal
articles, abstracts from conference
proceedings, books, and patents published
by current and former UH Department of
Chemistry faculty members. A portion of
these results were irrelevant because they
are products of institutions having
“Houston” in their titles or addresses. It is
unclear how to avoid retrieving these
irrelevant results. Result sets were typically
less than 20 items, depending upon the
specificity of the search terms.
Table 1
Faculty Web page Updating in the UH Department of Chemistry
Year of the Most
Recent Web Page
Update
Number of
Faculty Web
Pages Updated
(26 total)
Percentage of
Faculty Web
Pages
Updated
Number of
Faculty with
Most Recent
Publications in a
Given Year
Number of
Up-to-Date
Faculty Web
Pages
2007 4 15% 20 4
2006 6 23% 3 0
2004 2 8% 2 1
2003 1 4% 1 0
2002 1 4% 0
2001 5 19% 0
2000 7 27% 0
Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 2008, 3:3
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Evidence for ordering the book, Peroxides at
the Beginning of the Third Millennium:
Synthesis, Properties, Applications came from
searching Scholar using the term
“peroxides.” This produced 29 results.
Sixteen of these results, more than half of
the total, were not published by UH faculty.
This is not an uncommon outcome with the
Scholar method, since it searches the
institutional name and address by keyword.
The unwanted results came from Rice
University (in Houston, Texas) and Sam
Houston State University. More useful, but
still not exactly addressing the target
audience, were seven articles published by
members of the UH Department of
Chemical Engineering. These intra-
institutional results are valuable as
secondary justifications for monograph
purchases, particularly if there are frequent
collaborations between certain departments
or if faculty members have joint
departmental appointments.
The remaining six results were authored by
faculty in the UH Department of Chemistry
and addressed in some part the application
of peroxides as reagents in a variety of
chemical reactions. This record of scholarly
output was sufficient justification for the
purchase of the monograph.
The searches in Scholar illustrate one of this
resource’s primary strengths, its timeliness.
Since Scholar is continually updated,
searching with this database is the method
best suited to probing the agreement
between a book’s description and the most
recent published chemical literature.
In addition to timeliness, Scholar is
comprehensive. It covers the chemical
literature back to the mid-1800s, with ~9,500
journals indexed (“SciFinder for
Academics”). It also covers scientific
conferences and meetings, MEDLINE for
biomedical and biochemical searching, and
patents from U.S. and foreign patent offices.
The thoroughness of Scholar’s coverage
makes it highly likely that monograph
descriptors used as search terms will
retrieve the corresponding faculty-authored
literature, assuming it exists.
Scholar’s comprehensiveness has value in
other ways. Through patent results, Scholar
has the virtue of revealing commercial
applications of faculty research and thus
providing connections between chemistry,
technology, and engineering. By including
abstracts from conferences and meetings,
Scholar may reveal areas of research that are
just beginning to be explored and presented
by faculty. This information can make
selection decisions more proactive and make
monograph collections more sensitive to
trends in research.
With this said, a disadvantage of this
method may lie in relying too much on or
overstating the value of Scholar searches for
determining emerging areas of research
interest. No matter how timely, Scholar is
still a record of published work. While
papers or posters presented at conferences
may describe research in a more preliminary
and provisional way than journal articles,
they are nevertheless at a level of
organization and development to be made
part of the scientific record. For information
about research interests that have yet to be
expressed in publication, faculty web pages
may be a better source, if they have been
updated. Direct communication with
faculty members would also be invaluable
in this regard.
Method of Analyzing Circulation Statistics
To support the claim that these three
methodologies can build a collection of local
value, the circulation statistics of chemistry
monographs ordered from 2002 to 2007
were analyzed. This time period begins
with the author’s first year of making
monograph purchases at the Library and
Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 2008, 3:3
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ends two years after the author’s
coordinated application of his three
collection building methods. These methods
were developed organically over time, so
that prior to 2005, they were being used in a
limited fashion for book selection. The year
2005 is nevertheless an important point of
demarcation because it was at the beginning
of this year that the methods were applied
for the first time in a rigorous and
comprehensive manner for selection
decisions.
This time marker offers a convenient point
around which the impact of the methods on
the circulation of selected monographs can
be measured. Consequently, data about
monograph selections were arranged in two
tables in Appendix 1: Chemistry
Monograph Orders 2002-2004 (Excluding
Approval Orders and Added Copy Orders)
and Chemistry Monograph Orders 2005-
2007 (Excluding Approval Orders and
Added Copy Orders) (see separate file). The
first table shows monographs selected
without rigorous application of the methods
(2002-2004), and the second table shows
those selected with rigorous application of
them (2005-2007). The circulation rates of
these two groups were then compared to
determine if the consistent use of the
methods resulted in a higher rate of
circulation.
The 2002-2004 and the 2005-2007 tables
represent the circulation of all the chemistry
monographs ordered for the Library during
these time frames, 254 and 295 monographs
respectively. The following types of
monographic orders were excluded:
• Approval orders - these are
monographs that are sent
automatically from Blackwell’s
Book Services because they fit a
relatively broad descriptive profile.
They are often also judged by the
author using the methods before
acceptance or rejection. These
monographs are not included,
however, because their physical
presence may engender an
acceptance bias.
• Added copy orders - these are
excluded because the methods were
not involved in their selection. They
were selected based on their
appearance on lists of highly-used
monographs.
• Orders for monographs that are
non-circulating - Internal-use
statistics could be used for these
books, but these data are only
gathered periodically. So, this
circulation data is excluded.
• Orders that have been cancelled,
have not yet been received, have
been withdrawn, are being
processed, or are missing - These
orders have no circulation
information.
• Orders to fill a patron suggestion or
to alert a specific patron about a
particular monograph - In both of
these cases, a patron is notified
about the book and the book is held
for them. Unlike the other selected
books, these have inducements to
circulation, so their circulation data
is excluded.
The following data accompany the
monographic information in the tables in
Appendix 1 (see separate file):
• Order date
• Received date
• Date on shelf (estimated to be
approximately one month after
receipt)
• Circulations (excluding renewals) as
of May 1, 2008
• Circulations/month as of the date on
the shelf
The order date, received date, and
circulations were all taken from the records
for monographs in Millennium. The date on
shelf was calculated by adding a month to
Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 2008, 3:3
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the received date and rounding to the
nearest month. The roughly month-long
time frame for processing received
monographs to shelf-readiness was arrived
at through consultation with technical
services staff at the Library. The
circulations/month figure was calculated by
dividing the number of circulations as of
May 1, 2008 by the number of months
elapsed between the date on shelf and May
1, 2008.
Results
When compared, the 2005-2007 cohort of
monographs showed an increase in its
average monthly rate of circulation versus
the 2002-2004 cohort. The 2005-2007 average
rate of circulation was 0.058
circulations/month, while the 2002-2004
average rate was 0.053 circulations/month.
See below for Table 2: Statistical Features of
the 2002-2004 and the 2005-2007 Monograph
Cohorts. This appears to represent an
increase of approximately 9%, with the
numbers of circulations/month on average
9% greater in the cohort using the evidence
based methods in a consistent manner.
However, when these two cohorts are
considered as two large independent
samples and standard statistical analysis is
performed, this apparent increase in
circulation is seen to be due to natural
variations in rates of circulation among the
two samples. In other words, there is no
statistical evidence that the observed
difference in rates of circulation among the
2002-2004 and the 2005-2007 cohorts is
attributable to an increasingly rigorous
application of the evidence based methods
described here.
In order for the difference in circulation
between the two cohorts to be attributable to
differences in monograph selection
techniques, the test statistic
2
2
2
1
2
1
0
n
s
n
s
DYX
z
+
−−
= must have a value less
than − 2.33 (Stephens 213-14). In this
formula, X and Y are the means of two
populations, in this case the average
circulations/month of each cohort.
0
D
represents the null hypothesis, in this case
the state in which the average monthly
circulation of the two cohorts is the same.
This is the situation which results when the
rigor with which the monograph selection
methods are applied has no impact on
circulation. The symbols s1 and s2 are the
standard deviations of samples from the two
cohorts. The symbols n1 and n2 correspond
to the sizes of the samples drawn from the
two cohorts for analysis. In this case, each
sample size equals 30. The value of z
derived from the data found in Appendix 1
is − 0.294, considerably more than − 2.33, as
can be seen below in Table 2: Statistical
Features of the 2002-2004 and the 2005-2007
Monograph Cohorts.
Discussion
The methodologies for decision-making
discussed in this article are three possible
Table 2
Statistical Features of the 2002-2004 and
the 2005-2007 Monograph Cohorts
2002-2004
Cohort
2005-2007
Cohort
Average
Monthly
Circulation
(Mean)
0.053
0.058
Standard
Deviation 0.058 0.080
Sample Size
Analyzed
30
30
Test Statistic
(z)
− 0.294
Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 2008, 3:3
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approaches to building a collection of
chemistry monographs. Other
methodologies are conceivable, and a
number have been used to a limited degree,
such as: selection by approval plan, selection
via patron suggestions, selection by
publisher, and imitative selection based on
another institution’s collection. While these
strategies were once considered sufficient on
their own terms, they are now validated by
using the ILS, Google, or SciFinder Scholar
methods. For instance, chemistry books that
come on approval are not accepted until
evidence has been identified in the ILS,
online, or through Scholar for their future
use. For while the fact that a book has been
selected by an approval plan is itself a form
of evidence, given that it must fit a certain
profile of desired material, it may be judged
as insufficient, since this profile is
sometimes overly-broad. A judgment of
insufficiency may also apply to selection by
patron suggestion, since individual interest
may not reflect institutional interest; to
selection by publisher, since not everything
by an essential publisher will be locally
relevant; and to selection by imitation, since
no two institutions have identical sets of
research and teaching interests.
Regarding questions of sufficiency related to
the three methods, it is fair to say that each
method has somewhat different types of
evidence and therefore different ways of
measuring what amount of evidence is
sufficient. For the ILS approach, the
evidence reflects actual monograph usage in
a local context. As a result, this method is
the most directly suited to answering the
question, “If I purchase this book, will
anyone check it out?” In some situations,
making a decision is very straightforward,
as in the case of a new edition of a
monograph whose earlier edition has
circulated well according to the ILS. Other
situations are less clear, as when no earlier
edition exists and keyword searching
reveals related titles with no clear pattern of
circulation. Investigation of this title using
one of the other two methods may be
warranted in order to establish a solid case
for or against a purchase.
In the case of the Google-mediated method,
results vary widely in their utility as
evidence. They must be investigated
carefully to determine the extent of their
conceptual match to a monographic subject
as opposed to simply a keyword match.
Given that the use of all these methods
reflects to some extent an absence of
conceptual understanding of chemistry, it
would seem that making this kind of
distinction among results would be difficult.
In practice, however, it is relatively
straightforward and rests largely on both
the proximity of terms in the results and
their context within larger documents.
Spurious results can be easy to identify
owing to the occurrence of search terms at
widely dispersed points in texts. In useful
results, by contrast, the search terms occur
in close proximity to one another and tend
to be in parts of texts that serve
summarizing functions, such as titles,
abstracts, or introductions. In cases in
which the significance of search terms
within the larger text is ambiguous, the
clarifying use of one or both of the other
methods is recommended.
SciFinder Scholar results have more certain
relevance because they are products of
matches between search terms and a variety
of summarizing elements in document
records, including titles, abstracts, and index
terms. The locations of terms in these
results should be studied carefully,
however, because they may co-occur in a
way that makes them unrelated to one
another or causes them to have different
meanings. Also, if search words are
elements or compounds, these may match
with index terms because of their roles in
reactions that are tangential to or irrelevant
to the subjects of the monographs being
Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 2008, 3:3
14
investigated. It should also be noted that
indexing does not exist for every record in
Scholar, and so potentially relevant
connections may be missed. In this case, the
Google method, which searches full text,
might be employed.
Because of the limitations of these three
methods, they are frequently used together
until the ambiguity of a situation is resolved
or until all avenues for evidence-gathering
have been exhausted. The methods are
typically used sequentially in this order: ILS,
Google, and Scholar.
With regard to the analysis of circulation
statistics, a monthly rate of circulation was
used because monographs were compared
that were ordered at widely different times.
The circulations taken from Millennium
records show how often a book has been
checked out by patrons. When comparing
monographs that arrived on the shelf
several years apart, these circulation
numbers will tend to be higher for
monographs that have been on the shelf
longer.
This comparison may give a false advantage
based on longevity, since a younger
monograph might circulate as much or more
than an older monograph, given time.
Calculating the rates of circulation can
overcome this longevity bias. For instance, a
book on the shelf on May 2002 that has
circulated eight times has a higher number
of circulations than a book on the shelf on
May 2006 that has only circulated four
times. However, the 2006 book has a higher
rate of circulation/month (4/24 = 0.167) than
the 2002 book (8/72 = 0.111), as of May 1,
2008.
Conversely, the calculation of circulation
rates may introduce a regularity bias by
falsely assuming that books will circulate at
a constant rate. Given that the 2002-2004
and 2005-2007 cohorts of monographs are
close in age and young in relation to the
May 1, 2008 reference point, however, it
seems likely that their average rates of
circulation will remain steady for some time.
This assumes that Library patrons will be
guided in their use of all these monographs
in the near future primarily by subject-fit
with their information needs and not by
dates of publication. This also assumes that
the information needs of patrons will not as
a group change radically in a short time.
During the six-year course of this case
study, the Department of Chemistry has
consistently maintained its major programs
of research.
A more convincing test of a long-term
increase in circulation attributable to the use
of the methods would involve revisiting the
two cohorts at the effective end of the useful
life of their monographs. Circulation
statistics of the cohort monographs could be
compared when the majority of them have
reached obsolescence, in perhaps another
five to ten years.
Conclusion
The methods outlined above were
developed over time by a monograph
selector seeking to compensate for a lack of
academic background in chemistry. As
such, these strategies are necessarily
influenced by and flow from the selector’s
particular experiences. So while these
methodologies are rational and hopefully of
value to others, they do not encompass the
universe of approaches to this problem.
Other strategies could be employed,
including chemistry coursework, extensive
dialog with faculty members, reading
chemistry textbooks, etc. The methods are
admittedly reactive and somewhat
inefficient, but they have formed a trusted
and effective means of both addressing
selection uncertainty and building a
collection of local value. The three methods
may thus be considered supplements to
Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 2008, 3:3
15
other approaches, an echoing of what
librarians may already be doing in a
modified way, or a process already
superseded by better methods. In fact, the
present study may perhaps best be viewed
as an installment in the education of a
chemistry librarian.
The ILS, Google-mediated, and Scholar
methods may be considered evidence based
in two senses. In the first sense, these are
methods which require the inputs of locally-
relevant evidence, whether in the form of
circulation statistics, faculty web pages, or
citations of departmental research. In the
second sense, however, there is no statistical
evidence that the use of these methods to
select monographs increases their
circulation. Following the 2002-2004 and
2005-2007 monographs through the lifetime
of their usage, to a point when their
members have for the most part stopped
circulating, may change this picture and
show a statistically significant effect of these
methods.
Another test of the effectiveness of these
methods to increase circulation of chemistry
monographs would involve a more
controlled adoption of them. The results of
this research are complicated and to some
extent undermined by the fact that the
methods were adopted incompletely or in a
piecemeal fashion for some portion of the
analysis time period (2002-2004). This
reflects the fact that these methods and the
use of these methods as a coordinated
system were being developed as they were
being applied to real selection decisions.
The application of the methods or some
variant of them by librarians relatively new
to chemistry collection development and
collection development in general, would
offer a much more controlled test of
effectiveness.
Finally, the criteria for measuring sufficient
evidence for monograph purchases may
need to be reexamined and refined. Studies
could be conducted which investigate the
relative importance of different kinds of
evidence to the circulation of selected
monographs.
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