2016 Charleston Library Conference

Georgia State University's print circulation has declined over 50% since 2010. Collection development librarians made several small-scale adjustments to address this trend, yet the drop off in use continued unabated. We had to totally rethink the book budget. In order to make changes strategically and responsibly, we needed answers to a variety of questions: Who is using the books? Are there disciplines that do not need firm order allocations, or even monographs? Does format matter? Does it matter how the titles are acquired (approval vs. firm order vs. DDA)?

This session will discuss the multifaceted data-driven analysis we developed in order to provide a detailed and holistic picture of monograph collection performance and buying patterns. For example, we analyzed use of the monograph collection broken down by spending categories, format, and LC class, but also compared usage of the entire collection to the performance of the recently acquired titles. A more qualitative component of the project involved recording the decisions underlying the subject librarians' FY16 purchases. We will share how we developed our analysis, what our data has revealed, surprises within the project, and the action items generated by our activities. We hope to generate a discussion among audience members about how others have approached and addressed the problem of declining print circulation.