Assessing the Books We Didn’t Buy (the Sequel)

Abstract

Three universities (Santa Clara University, the University of San Francisco, and Loyola Marymount University) are leveraging patron-initiated borrowing data to inform our collection development. Expanding on a pilot project that began in 2014, we have been looking at five years of recent borrowing data, along with five years of acquisition data and five years of circulation data of local collections, to help us define what a "normal" level of borrowing looks like as well as identify gaps in local collections. We are also using the data to strengthen the meta-collection of our consortium (LINK+) through the intentional and coordinated diversification of approval plan profiles. We will discuss both methodology and findings to date: how this data is being gathered, analyzed, and then used on our campuses to inform collection development decisions.