[Eril-l] funding for DDA/PDA

[Karen Jensen]

Great discussion.

I think a missing piece (here anyway, there is plenty in the literature) is
whether or not patrons even know about the print books we're acquiring.
Librarians doing selection don't always do as much work on promotion, and
yet here at UAF we've widely promoted our e-book programs; everyone knows
about those. If we spent as much time and effort letting patrons know about
the print books we buy, would use increase? We've seen a steady 10+ year
decline in print use, even before e-books, and we didn't promote print
prior to that decline either, so perhaps that's not the issue. Still, I
have to wonder, because new faculty and students often do not know how to
use the catalog, how to find a book on the shelf, and many avoid the
physical library altogether; they have no idea what we have. I often see
the "aha" look when talking with groups or classes; "you have that?!"
 Printed books simply aren't in their consciousness any more. And some
faculty just buy books they need; they don't want to use a library copy
because it's inconvenient, they would have to return it or renew it, etc.
Lots of reasons, lots of possibilities. What other barriers are we putting
up between our patrons and our collections?

Although we heavily rely here on DDA, we also still purchase print, but
with extreme budget cuts we can no longer afford allocating large sums to
the "just in case" method. Just can't do it or justify it; there are too
many other priorities fighting their way to the top of the budget.

Karen Jensen
Collection Development Officer
Rasmuson Library
University of Alaska Fairbanks
907-474-6695
kljensen at alaska.edu


On Fri, Sep 25, 2015 at 8:40 AM, Rick Anderson <rick.anderson at utah.edu>
wrote:

> Again, if what we’re concluding is that because overall circulation is
> falling, a) we should buy fewer print books, because b) it shows they are
> not valued by users, I think that’s a cognitive leap we should not be
> making.
>
>
> To your knowledge, has anyone expressed that conclusion based purely on
> falling overall circulation numbers?
>
>
> But I DON’T think it means that users don’t need good books, that
> librarians can’t make good decisions about choosing books, or that
> purchasing print books and even journals is an activity we can turn our
> backs on wholesale – and a lot of people do think that.
>
>
> Can you cite any examples of librarians advocating the wholesale
> discontinuation of print acquisition? I spend a lot of time listening to
> and participating in the professional conversations around this issue, and
> I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone propose that. I don’t deny that there
> may be people out there taking that position, but I think they’d be pretty
> extreme outliers.
>
>
> At ARLIS this spring I listened to a museum publisher talk about how most
> exhibition catalogs will never be produced as ebooks. My dean keeps
> floating the idea that we don’t need print journals, when we have quite a
> few art journals that are simply not available electronically for
> libraries.
>
>
> Is your dean pushing you to cancel the art journals because they’re not
> available online?
>
>
> I have a nearly complete manuscript I am working on with a colleague and
> plan to make the data available when I publish. The stats are for all
> firm-order and approval books purchased for the main circulating collection
> in each fiscal year from 2008-09 through 2013-14.
>
>
> Great! It will be very interesting to see them. Thanks for your
> willingness to make them available.
>
> ---
> Rick Anderson
> Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication
> Marriott Library, University of Utah
> Desk: (801) 587-9989
> Cell: (801) 721-1687
> rick.anderson at utah.edu
>
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