Focus group answers (summary) Acquisitions Services 2/7/08 mcm

1) What are your thoughts about having a single liaison vs. a team who would support your work?

• Clear preference for a single contact
• Recognition that Acquisitions already functions like a team since staff specialize; appreciation for team-based mechanisms (rush, ej-help, Acq mailbox)
• Acknowledgement that personalities & attitudes vary on both sides, and a good match is critical
• Not concerned about how Acq is organized as long as the result is “seamless”
• Some understanding about how team could be beneficial (backup, sharing expertise leading to greater depth, knowledge of non-routine sources)
• Concern about non-routine materials (formats, language) being “lost” in a team, but perhaps would allow better service for these things
• Concern about communication within a team, would information get lost?
• Concern that roles within team would need to be clearly delineated
• Desire to talk with the person “who knows,” is working on the problem
• In fields where digital resources are important, team needs to include that expertise

2) Purchase of shelf-ready materials from Coutts will take place in stages, with standing orders and approvals probably the last stages of the transition. Once this happens, how do you envision keeping up with new material receipts that were not specifically firm-ordered?

• Some want to see materials; most(?) are happy with lists or with new book area
• Interest in getting lists ahead of time in order to deselect, especially with implementation of shelf-ready volumes
• Interested also in lists of what did not come
• Baker-Berry may want to make a more comfortable new book area, faculty would be interested too
• Other libraries (Kresge, Paddock, Feldberg?) have new book shelf that could substitute
• Make sure new labels don’t fade! [Preservation]
• Concerns about accuracy/appropriateness of LC classification assignments
• Do we/can we still get book jackets with shelf-ready?

3) How do you anticipate using the OCLC collection analysis tool? How might you see your Acquisitions liaison or team assisting with your analyses?

• High level of interest, but few have specific idea of how they would use
• Desire to learn to use themselves, but also a recognition that it might make sense for Acquisitions to have some expertise (especially for bibliographers with many other hats)
• Concern that apparently CAT (collection analysis tool) treats Dartmouth as a single system, cannot break out e.g. Feldberg collection; may be of limited use in some areas; is break out something Acquisitions could do?
• Interest in learning what others are doing with CAT, case studies, training
• Concern about OP procedures (in response to question about possible retrospective collecting)

4) Is the budget information you currently receive over the course of the year useful? Is there different or additional information that would be helpful? Are you getting the kinds of statistics, lists and other reports and analyses that you need?
5) Are you receiving the information you need or would wish to have to support serials collection decisions? A closely related question, is the information available to you regarding digital materials useful? For example, are you making use of the usage statistics? [Questions 4 & 5 are grouped together because responses covered both]

• Appreciate: on order > 6 months; serials paid last year but not yet this year; knowing when big journal renewals are posted
• Concern about how to figure out what $ is really available and what is committed (approvals & standing orders)
• Some want quarterly-then-monthly budget reports, some don’t
• Frustration with spring serials lists; want all information in single spreadsheet with “last payment”, circ statistics, digital usage statistics; want breakdown by only print, only digital, and both; breakdown by publisher
• Concern about packages; which titles should bibliographers be spending time reviewing, i.e. which could be cancelled or substituted and which can’t
• Interest in [monographic] vendor statistics (what is realistic expectation for order turnaround time) to help figure out budget situation at yearend
• Interest in knowing with budget report what percentage spent on digital
• Interest in knowing with budget report a breakdown by approvals, firm orders, standing orders
• Interest in regularly reviewing fund assignments for expenditures
• Interest in putting fund and selector codes in bib record to enable Online Catalog to be used for monitoring [note: this would also need date information or would get useless quickly]
• Concern about limitations of New Acquisitions List (which is not under Acquisitions’ purview?)
• High interest in usage statistics, though only some have used; difficult to determine when title is available through multiple sources, also whether we subscribe or not
• Interest in cost per use (as modeled by Peggy Sleeth)
• Some want ability to do review files directly themselves

6) [Do you use any of the information on our website? Can you find what you are looking for? This was asked only for Group #4] Is there other information you would like to see made available? Would you appreciate regular communications from Acquisitions (and if so, what kind of communication, and what types of information would be most useful)?

• Interested in follow up on questions that are asked of Acquisitions about specific titles, not just updating records
• Communication should go both ways, interest in knowing what works best from Acquisitions’ point of view, interest in dialogue
• Good time to revisit web as a communication tool, possibly work on joint project (similar to bibliographer toolkit idea) with new shared authoring tools
• Perception that Acquisitions page is difficult to navigate, hard to find things

7) Are there services that you would like to see from Acquisitions that we do not currently offer? Are there current services that you would like to see getting a higher priority? And conversely, current services that have less value to you?

• Claiming of journal issues should be a higher priority
• Clarification needed on gifts workflow, OP search workflow
• Concern about timely processing of government documents
• Hope that more effort can be put into exceptions, non-routine, problems

 

-- M. Caroline Magenau - 19 Mar 2008