Industry standards in ARL libraries: electronic and on‐demand

Abstract

Purpose-Little is known about the current state of industry standards subscriptions in U.S. libraries. In this age of electronic access and tightening budgets, many libraries are re-examining whether or not to alter paper subscriptions of standards to electronic versions and/or switch to on-demand delivery.Design/Methodology-Two surveys were conducted in an attempt to gauge the extent to which other libraries are currently collecting standards in electronic format, or providing on-demand purchasing for industry standards.Findings-The number of libraries purchasing electronic standards or providing on-demand purchasing in 2003 appears to be incongruous with comments from both surveys. In the 2001 survey, librarians could not find ways to fund on-demand purchasing and in the 2003 survey, a number of libraries were purchasing some sets on an irregular basis to save money. A little over half (51%) of the responding libraries provide electronic versions of standards and sixty percent indicated they provide on-demand purchasing of individual standards.Originality/Value-Survey responses resulted in several local changes to improve patron success rates at acquiring industry standard including: created a publicly-searchable database of locally-available standards, initiated a purchase on-demand process, worked with Interlibrary Loan (ILL) staff to determine which standards would be better to purchase versus request on ILL, and became more adept at reference interviews involving requests for standards. including: created a publicly-searchable database of locally-available standards, initiated a purchase ondemand process, worked with Interlibrary Loan (ILL) staff to determine which standards would be better to purchase versus request on ILL, and became more adept at reference interviews involving requests for standards.

Standards Collections: Considerations for the Future

“…Since Musser's (1990) article, several case studies have been published describing various aspects of standards collections at individual institutions (Taylor 1999;Matylonek and Peasley 2001;Melgoza 2002; Papin-Ramcharan, Dolland, and Dawe 2011; Murphy, Strong, and Sewerin 2011; Kozak 2014; Dunn and Xie 2017). In addition, both Pellack (2005) and Matthews (2006) conducted surveys of academic libraries standards collection practices, with Pellack focusing mainly on ARL libraries with an engineering collection and Matthews on libraries of top engineering schools, as ranked by America's Best Graduate Schools in 2004. Matthews' (2006) work also involved reviewing library websites for standards user guides and policies, as well as investigating librarian responses to a reference question about standards.…”

Teaching and Access to Industry Standards in Canada: Experience at Queen's University and the University of Toronto

“…The steady migration of scitech materials to online format is also seen in the standards literature, and this is seen by some as a good fit to our engineering user community's tendency to value desktop delivery [12], while others see on-demand purchasing as a more cost-effective strategy [11].…”

“…In these situations selection on an individual basis may be necessary. A 2003 survey showed librarian mediated, on-demand purchasing to be a popular purchasing option for many ARL libraries [11].…”

“…A growing theme is the perceived need to go beyond providing simple access and to actively promote standards as valuable educational materials. This can be accomplished with a greater web presence, more information literacy interventions, and through the creation of more effective finding aids [11,12].…”

Citing of Industry Standards in Scholarly Publications

“…Others have written about how to develop standards collections in academic libraries (Taylor 1999) and how libraries provide access to standards (Pellack 2005). Based on previous work (Curtis 2011;Musser & Conkling 1996;Zhang 2018), we expected that standards are cited in scholarly publications; however, one central question is whether the analysis could reveal which disciplines are most frequently citing standards and therefore validate the need for these documents as part of an academic library collection.…”