Literature about the size and growth of collections was dominated by a focus on libraries’ unique holdings and on the effect of shifting collecting from print to electronic resources. The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) published statistics that showed distinct shifts in collecting practices and collection data reporting practices. In their discussion of 2004–5 data, Kyrillidou and Young acknowledged the growing importance of capturing more precise data about electronic resources and modified their reporting statistics to accommodate them.¹⁴ The same authors, in their analysis of 2005–6 data, stated that counting the number of volumes held, volumes added, and serials subscriptions in a library is no longer the best measure of valuing the importance of the local collection.¹⁵ The ARL adjusted its approach from counting the addition and cost of serials subscriptions to counting the addition and cost of serials titles in their 2006–7 discussion.¹⁶ By 2008, Kyrillidou and Young noted that ARL libraries were acquiring 60 percent fewer monographs per student than they purchased in 1986, following a downward trend over a two-decade period.¹⁷

Stoller surveyed academic library holdings between 1994 and 2004 and found that libraries still focused on monographic and print collections even as they developed their electronic libraries.¹⁸ He foresaw this model as unsustainable and even inappropriate considering that academic libraries had not yet confronted the more serious issues surrounding the dramatic changes in scholarly communication. Lavoie, Connaway, and O'Neill's 2007 survey of academic libraries’ digital holdings using WorldCat showed that libraries were collecting a growing proportion of electronic titles.¹⁹ Two articles identified unique library holdings. Bernstein's study of a random sample of OCLC WorldCat's bibliographic records for print books determined that the vast majority of items are held by fifty or fewer participating libraries.²⁰ Chrzastowski and colleagues’ study found that more than 50 percent of print serials collections held in the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI) and ten other Illinois research university libraries were unique last copies.²¹

Several publications addressed collection composition, including the conversion of print collections to electronic, new approaches to hybrid collections, and a focus on local collections. Although most of the literature focused on local issues of collecting practices, the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) published two large surveys covering the state of specific national collections. Brogan and Rentfrow assessed the scope of e-resources on American literature and found that scholars agreed that the ready availability of digital resources has transformed the landscape of the study of literature in many positive ways, but that significant issues complicate the broader acceptance of digital scholarship.²² These include insufficient peer-review processes, lack of trusted platforms for preserving digital scholarship, copyright complications, lack of viable business models, and a lack of specialists. Smith, Allen, and Allen's survey of the state of audio collections in American academic libraries showed an increased demand for the use of audio resources in both teaching and research, but significant recurring problems with access issues, both technical and legal.²³ They concluded that money alone will not solve the problems; rather, new approaches to intellectual control, new technologies, and aggressive approaches to access policies will help ensure the ongoing importance of audio collections. Hunter stated that libraries are inevitably moving toward a digital collections environment, but warned that bulletproof digital archiving has not yet been guaranteed.²⁴ She further observed that the lack of this guarantee precludes the movement to end subscribing to print journals and that librarians, scholars, and publishers must explore concerns and options together. Baker countered that the largest challenges in taking responsibility for digital information and knowledge management are less technical in nature than they are financial and social.²⁵ Martell wrote that the use of physical collections plummeted between 1995 and 2006 while use of electronic resources skyrocketed.²⁶ Because of the dramatic increase in demand for electronic resources, he recommended a proportional increase in budget allocations for electronic resources with declining allocations made for monograph and print collections.

Case reported in 2004 that in 2001–2, the average academic library spent an average of 92 percent of their $1.4 million acquisitions budget on electronic journals.²⁷ She identified a trend toward more libraries canceling print journals and subscribing to electronic versions. DeVoe's 2005 survey of academic libraries showed that 85 percent of the respondents cancelled their print journal subscriptions when the library had access to electronic versions of the same titles.²⁸

Connaway and Wicht provided a historical retrospective of the evolution of the e-book and maintained that e-books, despite well-known problems, are worth the effort because they are what users want.²⁹ They urged a broader dialogue between librarians, content providers, and publishers to overcome academic libraries’ reticence in adopting the e-book. Bailey conducted a study at Auburn between 2000 and 2004 in which he showed e-book usage through netLibrary increased by three to five times while use of the print collection decreased by a third.³⁰ Robbins, McCain, and Scrivener reported that ARL libraries were trending toward the cancelling print reference sources, relying instead on electronic access to the same sources.³¹

While open access (OA) continued to be discussed as an aspect of collection management, many unresolved issues remained. Brogan's Contexts and Contributions: Building the Distributed Library, a major contribution to the Digital Library Federation's (DLF) suite of work, focused on the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH).³² Van Orsdel and Born provided an important snapshot of the status of the OA movement.³³ They stated that the serials crisis has morphed into a crisis of public policy and described academic libraries’ responses to both publisher strategies and federal policy initiatives. Johnson projected that OA would benefit the sciences more than other disciplines and that it would be a widely anticipated cost-reducing option.³⁴ Anderson, in her monograph about digital library ethics, reasserted Stewart Brand's principle that information wants to be free and indicated that OA follows that principle.³⁵ Hunter discussed the road by which OA found its place in collection management, observing that collection development in the 1990s moved to collection management, and that in the 2000s collection management combined with online access management (the “right resource, right now” perspective).³⁶ Hunter noted that OA might provide an avenue for libraries to explore alternative collections options. Heath and Duffy showed that the rising costs of scholarly journals have changed the relationship between researchers, librarians, and publishers.³⁷ They urged OA, despite the concern that its sustainability had not yet been demonstrated. Schmidle and Via illuminated the crisis in library information and science serials and used this problem to advocate for affordable OA.³⁸ Johnson advocated for the Open Content Alliance (OCA) model for mass digitization over Google's commercial enterprise.³⁹ He discussed the OCA's embrace open accessibility principles as a better fit for the academy and urged libraries to pursue policy initiatives to help shape the global digital library. Hood reported that a majority of ARL member libraries surveyed for a SPEC Kit were providing links to journals most commonly associated with the OA movement.⁴⁰ However, most of those responding libraries had no collection development policies that addressed criteria for selection of externally hosted OA resources. Walters analyzed the potential impact of OA on institutional journal expenditures and concluded that a small number of the top research libraries would end up paying a far higher proportion of the aggregate cost.⁴¹ Buczynski warned that the OA movement is undermined by direct-to-consumer user-pay options in collection development.⁴²

Numerous publications addressed collecting materials not traditionally associated with academic library collection development policies. Attitudes changed toward collecting materials that once were considered ephemeral to library collections as academic and user demands influenced academic libraries to think more locally. This period saw an increasing interest in collecting materials relating to both the study of and engagement in popular culture.

To encourage academic libraries to focus more on their local needs, authors addressed the opportunities and challenges of catering to users whose language needs may not be within the scope of the library's capabilities. Agee and Solis urged Spanish language collections experts nationwide to share their knowledge openly and widely so that libraries that have no Spanish language expert can benefit from their collective expertise.⁴³ On a smaller scale, Schomberg and Grace outlined how the library at Minnesota State University–Mankato tailored its collection development efforts to meet the needs of their growing Somali student population.⁴⁴

Video games and popular forms of fiction, two areas of popular culture materials, received attention. Harris and Rice reported that video gaming collections were becoming more prevalent in academic libraries.⁴⁵ Ward, Laskowski, and Sandvig conducted a 2007 study that found that 70 percent of public libraries supported gaming in some capacity; they recommended academic libraries consider doing the same.⁴⁶ Gick, Baker and colleagues, and Tappeiner and Lyons wrote about the pros and cons of developing video games collections at academic libraries.⁴⁷ Kane, Soehner, and Wei noted that the emergence of academic degree programs in gaming, such as the Computer Game Design degree program at the University of California-Santa Cruz, can prompt the development of department-centered collections.⁴⁸

The growing practice of collecting graphic novels in academic libraries was discussed by O'English, Matthews, and Lindsay.⁴⁹ Conversely, Matz observed that comic book collections in academic libraries are almost nonexistent despite their recognition as a scholarly medium in many fields of study.⁵⁰ Collecting chick lit, a genre of popular fiction focusing on the role of modern women in society, was explored by Alsop and Davis-Kahl.⁵¹ Koh, Stoddart and Kiser, and Gisonny and Freedman discussed the growing importance of collecting zines in academic libraries.⁵² Several studies revealed some categories still not collected within the larger scope of the most popular materials. Hsieh and Runner found that although academic libraries are purchasing leisure reading materials, they were not collecting textbooks even though they are very much in demand.⁵³ Mulcahy reported that science fiction novels, despite their popularity, were not extensively collected by ARL libraries.⁵⁴ Halley and Heinrichs found from a survey of academic library holdings in WorldCat that popular culture periodicals were not widely collected.⁵⁵

ARL published statistics that revealed important indicators of how libraries were handling the dramatic increase of electric resources being added to their collections. In their 2004–5 summary, Kyrillidou and Young noted that the serials crisis was further disrupted by the emergence of the electronic environment, but that the cost of serials had dropped slightly, possibly because of consortial arrangements and Big Deal (bundled journal packages) offerings.⁵⁶ In 2005–6, Kyrillidou and Young noted that indicating the value of unit cost of a serial subscription becomes relatively uninformative when libraries have access to the same serial title though multiple subscriptions and platforms.⁵⁷ In 2006–7, Kyrillidou and Bland concluded that the cost of accessing electronic materials had far outpaced the cost of acquiring other materials.⁵⁸ Indeed, by 2008 the average ARL library spent 51 percent of its materials budgets on electronic resources.⁵⁹

Brewer and colleagues reported on the results of a 2003 ARL retreat in Tucson, which sought to envision a fundamental restructuring of academic libraries in light of ongoing budget crises.⁶⁰ Several articles discussed Big Deals. Hahn reported on a 2005 ARL member survey that measured the satisfaction of ARL libraries with publishers’ Big Deals and concluded that although most libraries conducted frequent journal cancellation projects, journal bundles were often protected from cancellation.⁶¹ Despite this, libraries were generally satisfied with the cost of publishers’ bundled journal packages. Frazier discussed the liabilities and opportunities of not buying into Big Deals and focused on journal cost-effectiveness.⁶² He argued that the most cost-effective Big Deals are not financially sustainable. Ebert discussed the utilization of the Big Deal by a consortium of independent academic libraries in New York State and saw this to be an emerging model of collaboration between libraries demonstrating cost-effective uses of Big Deals.⁶³

Barnes, Clayborne, and Palmer discussed the need for a dialogue between publishers, vendors, and libraries to ensure the ongoing viability of monograph publishing.⁶⁴ Walters observed that book prices were not rising at the same rate as journal prices and that undergraduate libraries could achieve economic sustainability if they were to renew their focus on books rather than journals.⁶⁵ Lawall and Di analyzed library monographic and serials allocations and believed that librarians were struggling with the instability of electronic resource pricing.⁶⁶

Boissy, Feick, and Knapp reported the publisher view of factors considered when setting pricing and how those factors were being changed by the advent of the electronic journal.⁶⁷ Gerhard found that electronic journal pricing models were in extreme flux and that libraries could not sustain their current budgeting strategies.⁶⁸ Hahn discussed the particular problem larger institutions faced with tiered pricing models for journals because they make cost versus benefit decisions more frequently than smaller institutions.⁶⁹ Spencer and Millson-Martula observed that college and small research university libraries have adopted a highly rational approach to managing escalating print serials costs and developing hybrid serials collections.⁷⁰ In their CLIR report, Schonfeld and colleagues projected a future cost analysis and concluded that recurring costs for e-journal titles would remain substantially lower than their print counterparts during a twenty-five-year period.⁷¹

Cooper presented six models to analyze the cost options for providing electronic journal access in the University of California system while acknowledging the importance of print serials to researchers.⁷² Via and Schmidle investigated the return on investment of serial expenditures for increasingly expensive journals in the library and information science field and suggested that librarians must play a proactive role as consumers of the publications.⁷³ They questioned the relative value to library collections of some journals if their prices are high and the journals are seldom cited by researchers. Romero showed that subscription prices of communication studies journals outpaced all other U.S. journals between 1994 and 2004, tripling during the period.⁷⁴ Data like these, she noted, are needed to leverage negotiations with journal publishers.

Johnson's general discussion of collection development and management captured most of the themes—including electronic resources—of the period that librarians must consider in all aspects of collections.⁷⁵ Although many authors felt that libraries were still in transition, most described policies, procedures, staffing structures, and budgetary considerations for electronic resources as though they were regular features in the contemporary library landscape.

Walton, Hoffman and Wood, and Perez concentrated on the policy aspects of monograph collections and, while they continued to cover traditional policies and practices such as allocations, subject coverage, and selection, all included discussion of electronic resources either as deserving of particular policy discussion or as subsections of traditional policy areas.⁷⁶ Bodi and Maier-O'Shea asked what should determine collection development policy.⁷⁷ They considered local needs of students, what should be available locally and what should be available remotely, and whether policy should be based on curriculum support or learning outcomes of the curriculum.

Waters attempted to summarize emerging strategic issues for the ARL and identified six: materials become “processible” or subject to computational processing, intellectual property issues surrounding processible materials, new and expanded search and research capabilities, new discipline-based research methods, new publication emphases, and interaction between digital library, digital publishing, and learning management systems.⁷⁸ Collins and Carr edited a volume on the hybrid nature of journal collections, a clearly visible and dramatic shift from 2004 to 2008.⁷⁹

Bosch and colleagues, Anderson, and Mitchell and Surratt described the institutionalization of processes created to handle acquisitions of electronic materials of all kinds.⁸⁰ Although the policies, procedures, and organizational structures are new, the days of being stymied by electronic resources are over; library organizations have developed the necessary changes to ensure orderly processing of acquisitions. Newly created positions (in particular the electronic resources librarian), processes, and negotiation principles are in place and part of the expected organization scheme in acquisitions departments.

Pritchard discussed needed changes in library organizations because of shifts in information formats.⁸¹ Chadwell looked at emerging trends and asked librarians to take seriously the effects of OA, electronic theses and dissertations, consortial collaboration, and the substantive funding decreases that libraries experienced.⁸² She noted that these important factors for library collections will affect library organizational structures. Anderson urged librarians to reduce allocations to older practices and lesser used materials and services, and increase allocations to newer practices and increasingly popular materials and services.⁸³

The subject specialist position was the focus of much attention because of evolving duties and the changing nature of what is being collected. Dorner's study of five major institutions used data to document changes in subject specialist duties and responsibilities.⁸⁴ In their discussion regarding workforce diversity, Kim and colleagues noted the need to recruit subject specialists and librarians of color and various cultural and ethnic backgrounds to best serve the current diversity in users.⁸⁵ McAbee and Graham verified that subject specialists frequently share duties at a general reference desk.⁸⁶ Goetsch documented the expansion of subject specialists’ role to include reference, instruction, and liaison responsibilities, with knowledge of electronic resources increasingly required.⁸⁷ Logue and colleagues documented how liaison services changed from collection-centered activities to more user services.⁸⁸ Tchangalova and Feigley discussed the impact of emerging technologies on the traditional subject guide and a need for subject specialists to improve this common tool for user instruction.⁸⁹ Hahn and Schmidt looked at Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) member websites and the information about scholarly communication provided in collection policy webpages, viewing this as an outreach concern of subject specialists.⁹⁰ Stoller described liaison responsibilities as a way to build bridges between the collections and researchers.⁹¹ Cassner and Adam's findings revealed traditional subject specialist functions have expanded to include services for distance learners.⁹² Cheney proposed shifting the traditional role of social science specialists to include collection development and user services for government information.⁹³ Carter discussed the creation of manuals for training bibliographers.⁹⁴ Tucker and Torrence spoke to new collection development librarians from the perspective of the trenches.⁹⁵ Dilevko and colleagues recommended using scholarly book reviews to develop subject expertise.⁹⁶ Lyons explored the value of subject specialists attending academic conferences.⁹⁷

What Atkinson called the challenge of defining the core played a large role in collection building literature.⁹⁸ The integration of electronic resources was a collection policy topic and prompted discussion regarding the nature of library collections. Several writers examined new scholarly and popular cultural phenomena and considered them important emerging areas of collection building. Bodi and Maier-O'Shea asserted that libraries are in a user-centered rather than collection-centered world and that collection management policy and practices must reflect the postmodern era by meeting emerging expectations.⁹⁹ Myall and Anderson informally surveyed electronic resources librarians and speculated on the competencies required to structure collection plans in the changing information environment.¹⁰⁰ Corrigan discussed posting collection policies on the web for outreach purposes and as a staff resource.¹⁰¹

Collection development manuals reflected the codification of policies and procedures for the newly integrated emerging formats and provided tested collection management advice. Evans and Saponaro, and Disher, discussed integrated collection development.¹⁰² Gregory, Boyle, Reese and Banerjee, and Kovacs guided librarians through the digital collection building landscape.¹⁰³ Curtis focused on electronic journals collections and Albitz offered up a detailed discussion on licensing and management.¹⁰⁴ The institutional repository collection building manual by Gibbons and a workbook by Barton and Waters provided guidance for that nascent area of collection responsibilities.¹⁰⁵ The National Information Standards Organization released the third edition of A Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections containing standard definitions and basic collection building principles.¹⁰⁶

Shifting techniques in selection was a major theme. The Internet and electronic vendor systems fueled discussions of many new tools for selectors. Emerging themes in scholarly research led librarians to identify selection challenges. Most of the literature discussed technical aspects of the tools and processes.

Quinn discussed the judgment and decision making involved in selection as he looked at cognitive and affective processes of selectors.¹⁰⁷ Johnson and Brown, Levine-Clark and Jobe, and Williams and Best looked at the use of reviews for selecting and analyzed their impact, utility, and predictive value.¹⁰⁸

Various aspects of approval plans continued to receive attention. Fenner provided an overview and introduction for new librarians or students who may not be familiar with approval plans.¹⁰⁹ Jacoby surveyed college libraries and concluded that use of approval plans is not declining.¹¹⁰ In case studies, Brush looked at titles in an engineering monograph approval plan and found that the circulation of mechanically selected titles was more frequent in all categories than the circulation of the books in those areas as a whole.¹¹¹ Kamada found both efficiencies and limitations in an approval plan for her Japanese studies collection.¹¹² Gyeszly experimented with using a vendor's database to determine categories of materials for selection.¹¹³

Selecting in specialized areas continued to be a topic of interest. Challenges included changes within academic culture and new disciplines organizing within the academy. Multidisciplinary academic fields and broad-based area studies departments compelled selectors to broaden collecting. A collection edited by Hazen and Spohrer discussed selection techniques and issues for new broad-based area studies programs.¹¹⁴ While communication is not a new discipline, Popoff highlighted the ongoing issues with communication journals that arise because of loosely defined disciplinary boundaries.¹¹⁵ Dali and Dilevko provided techniques for selecting Slavic and East European languages.¹¹⁶ Issue 31/32 of The Acquisitions Librarian (2004) was dedicated to selection in many subject areas and highlighted how varied selection can be in different subject areas.

Several specialized areas were discussed in monographs. Fling, writing about music, and Benedetti, writing about art museum libraries, assisted selectors who need to understand core collections, specialized publishers and formats, and techniques particular to collection management in these areas.¹¹⁷ Emerging genres in art and literature, including graphic novels, zines, manga, and anime, received attention as important collection areas for the study of popular culture. Miller, Bartel, and Brenner provided core collection advice and techniques for discovering and acquisition in these new areas.¹¹⁸ Connor and Wood edited a volume that considered the issues confronting medical librarians, including licensing of electronic resources, medical publishers, and library liability.¹¹⁹ The Association for Library Collections and Technical Services Sudden Selector's Guides provided core collection and acquisitions advice for business and communication studies for selectors who may not have background knowledge in these areas.¹²⁰ These guides acknowledged budget restraints that made necessary the practice of assigning subjects to selectors without backgrounds in those areas.

Several books and articles discussed selecting types or formats of materials that require particular skills and knowledge. Perez updated a 1996 ALA manual on reference materials to include important electronic resources.¹²¹ Morrison focused on government information, emphasizing the impact of web technology.¹²² Tafuri, Seaberg, and Handman explained techniques for collecting out-of-print materials using the web and print-on-demand services.¹²³ Schmidt, Shelburne, and Vess surveyed hate group websites and explored technical and other issues involved in the collection of entire websites.¹²⁴ Walters looked at selection criteria for electronic journals that take into account new considerations, such as consortial and collaborative selection and publisher bundling.¹²⁵ Kulp and Rupp-Serrano surveyed the Greater Western Library Alliance and found that many libraries were experimenting with decision-making processes and organizational practices regarding electronic resources.¹²⁶ Cassell and colleagues developed guidelines for gifts, a category of materials that is perennially problematic.¹²⁷

On-demand acquisition using interlibrary loan (ILL) user requests to trigger acquisition procedure and books-on-demand programs received attention. Ruppel analyzed ILL requests to make collection development decisions.¹²⁸ She found that requested titles were of high quality and inexpensive enough to make an on-demand acquisition policy cost effective when compared to ILL. Mouyal studied titles requested by users and concluded that requests can be used to determine additional subjects to be added to collection development policies.¹²⁹ Mortimore analyzed subjects of materials users requested and the implementation of just-in-time acquisitions to achieve an appropriate blend of access and ownership.¹³⁰

Publications addressing collaboration with faculty for collection building focused on serials cancellation. Chamberlain, Caraway, and Andrews reported discussing journal price inflation factors with faculty to inform and engage them in deselection decisions.¹³¹ Srivastava, Linden, and Harmon, and Clement and colleagues, discussed journal deselection factors with faculty and learned about faculty needs and values to inform journal cancellation decisions.¹³² Walther took a detailed look at factors librarians and faculty use to determine the value of journals by surveying both groups in his university.¹³³ He found that the factors used by the two groups were similar and that librarians consulted with faculty to make collection decisions. White explored the extent to which collaborative collection building decisions affected research and instructional support.¹³⁴

Weeding continued as an important aspect of collection management because of perennial questions about the finite space in library buildings and about how to assign priorities to available space. Handis described a process of carefully designing the purpose of the collection and revising the collection policy to fit current programs and collection priorities.¹³⁵ Weeding followed as a way to implement the policy and deselect materials no longer relevant to the programs and priorities. Ward and Aagard discussed using WorldCat and other collection data to deselect serials in their large storage facility at Purdue.¹³⁶

Discussion regarding the Conspectus (a collection analysis tool developed by the Research Libraries Group (RLG) and its member libraries in the early 1980s) wound down, and subsequent methods were tried and scrutinized for their improvements over the problematic subjectivity many saw in the Conspectus approach. Skaggs used the Washington Library Network Conspectus method to assess an integrated government documents collection.¹⁵⁸ Munroe and Ver Steeg interviewed thirteen experienced Conspectus users and outlined the uncertainty resulting from subjectivity within the Conspectus techniques.¹⁵⁹ Beals moved beyond the subjectivity of Conspectus to discuss experiences using the brief tests of collection strength method developed by Howard White.¹⁶⁰ Beals and Gilmour added a discussion of the WorldCat Collection Analysis tool to their brief tests experience, concluding that both methods may be used on a variety of sizes and types of collections and that both are limited by the need for precisely defined LC classification.¹⁶¹ White continued to develop ideas regarding methods and in 2008 described his coverage power tests, improving on brief tests.¹⁶²

Many librarians reported on their use of various tools for collection analysis and assessment. Metz and Gasser used Ulrich's Serials Analysis System to look at the Virtual Library of Virginia (VIVA) serials with the aim of identifying the last subscription titles, and they discovered much more about what VIVA did and did not have.¹⁶³ Nisonger defined core and presented a taxonomy for classifying core journal lists in hopes of helping librarians select the appropriate lists for their purposes.¹⁶⁴ Because of the lack of a defined set of core journals in German Studies, Rutledge and Partikian analyzed WorldCat holdings and determined a consensus journal list rather than core journal list.¹⁶⁵

As they moved from print to electronic formats, librarians used various assessment approaches to make decisions about eliminating print materials. University of Arizona Libraries’ Bracke and Martin analyzed electronic content from ScienceDirect for completeness and quality in deciding to discard print and reallocate space.¹⁶⁶ Assessment for decision-making support in academic program reviews was undertaken at Oregon State University by Bobal, Mellinger, and Avery.¹⁶⁷ They questioned the worth of assessment when it does not help to increase library budget allocations for new programs.

Authors reported on work to determine what methods would produce satisfactory assessment tools for use and user needs. The call for standards continued as librarians looked at usage data produced by commercial and other sources and discussed the use of multiple techniques to assess collection value for users. Moen, Oguz, and McClure looked at Texas State Library and Archives Commission data to determine how disparate standards might be reconciled automatically for use assessment and what would be needed to develop significant standard statewide usage data.¹⁶⁸ Covi and Cragin discussed bundling of electronic resources, and factors that affect use or non-use and their implications for collection management.¹⁶⁹ Sullivan advised librarians to look at expectations and user needs of the “chip” generation and the functionality provided in electronic formats to try to find the best match.¹⁷⁰ In looking at OhioLINK consortium chemistry journals and collaborating with chemistry faculty, Feather, Bracken, and Diaz sought to balance cost-effectiveness based on objective factors (such as price and usage data) with subjective factors (such as e-research value) to assess consortium collections.¹⁷¹ Samson, Derry, and Eggleston also developed a hybrid assessment method that included data covering cost, collection coverage, quantity of full text, and, as much as possible, usage comparison, for comparing electronic databases.¹⁷²

Only two articles discussed the LibQual assessment tool. Self looked at LibQUAL+ data from ARL libraries and noted that journals are the most important items in libraries for faculty.¹⁷³ Mentch, Strauss, and Zsulya discussed results of their use of focus groups to supplement their LibQual+ survey information through which they learned more about users and user satisfaction with library service quality.¹⁷⁴

The continuing change from print to electronic and the need to look at assessment methods was a frequent theme. Electronic journals received the most attention. Davis looked at the Eigenfactor as an emerging tool for calculating journal impact, and he also examined download logs to estimate the size of user population for a given journal.¹⁷⁵ Working with Price, Davis evaluated the emerging Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources (COUNTER) standard in a study that looked at data from thirty-two research institutions and six publishers, concluding that the standard appeared to be skewed by the journal interface.¹⁷⁶ In dealing with hybrid collections, practitioners struggled to discover ways to look at user behavior to inform their choices between formats and make other collection decisions. McDonald used statistical techniques to reach an understanding of both citation analysis for ranking journals and use counts in the era of electronic citation analysis and online journal use data.¹⁷⁷ Duy and Vaughan looked at print journal citation and use patterns and found that electronic journal use data may be an effective replacement for citation data as an indicator of journal use and that electronic use data correlates with local reshelving data, indicating that popular journals in print also were popular in electronic format at their institution.¹⁷⁸ Their findings led them to conclude that impact factor as determined by global metrics did not correlate with their local use data; thus impact factor may not be a good metric for local selection decisions.

Print books and e-books received less attention but still garnered interest. O'Neill discussed the quantitative measure of the audience level field in an OCLC record to assess the appropriateness of books for given collections.¹⁷⁹ Connaway and Snyder reported that the transaction log can be used as a valuable analysis tool for tracking e-book usage.¹⁸⁰

Citation analysis continued as a basic tool in collection assessment, with numerous articles written about the use of this tool in local studies. Two articles looked at citation analysis itself, questioning its use in assessment and shedding light on its value relative to other methods. Beile and Boote examined citations in doctoral dissertations at three institutions and determined that they are not a reliable measure to make collection building decisions.¹⁸¹ Coleman used the journal JELIS as her example and advised taking more facets, beyond citation impact factor, into account when assessing the value of specialized journals that reach small audiences of scholars.¹⁸² The institution-based studies examined more focused questions of local interest and provided documentation for lessons learned while using this tool.