2016 Charleston Library Conference

Approval plans are an established method of acquiring library materials whereby a vendor selects material for a library based on profiles established by the Library. At Yale University, we allocate a significant percentage of our collections budget to monograph approval plans. While some academic libraries have reduced or eliminated book approval plans in favor of new acquisition models, like demand driven or evidence-based acquisitions, others, including Yale, continue to rely heavily on traditional approval plans for collection development.

Using fifteen years of Yale Library acquisitions and circulation data, we have developed models that allow for approval plan assessment by various facets, such as language, publication year, publisher, and approval vendor. We compare use of approval plan books, patron-requested purchases, and titles individually selected by librarians. We examine approval plan monographs in the context of resource sharing networks. We also examine approval plan acquisitions in the context of our growing collection of e-books, including licensed subscription models (Ebrary, Overdrive) and perpetual access e-book packages (e.g. Springer, Project Muse/UPCC). The goal is to create a viable model for ongoing assessment of our approval programs in the context of our overall collection development strategy.

Our findings have led to changes in Yale's approval plan profiles and have informed decisions about e-book acquisitions. Like all good analytics projects, the data also led us to ask more questions about community engagement with collections.

Attendees will learn about our assessment model and have the opportunity to pose questions about the data and user engagement.

This session is co-authored by Julie Linden, Associate Director of Collection Development, Yale University Library and Sarah Tudesco, Assessment Librarian, Yale University Library, who were unable to attend the conference.