An assessment of library holdings and utilization of the College Library (Laguna Campus)

Department/Unit

Libraries

Document Type

Archival Material/Manuscript

Publication Date

6-17-2019

Abstract

With the utilization of different collection assessment methods, this study seeks to answer the following: (1) identify the strengths, weaknesses and imbalances in the collections of the De La Salle University Laguna Campus College Library, (2) determine how successful it is in acquiring and providing access to its collections (3) examine the usage of its collections. Collection-based approaches such as collection mapping, list checking, comparative analysis against peer libraries, reshelving method and usage factor in the form of Percentage of Expected Use (PEU) were utilized.

Findings showed that the strength of the collection comes from the holdings on education related subjects like language and literature (3,821t), social sciences (3,303t), and philosophy (2,138t) are higher. Books on computer studies are also high as they are included in the science collection (2,213t) as well as the engineering books under the technology collection (1,698t). The collection is weak in the areas of local history of the Americas (F), music (M), Agriculture (S), Military science (U), Naval science (V) and Library science (Z). This is understandable as there are no programs offered for such subjects. An imbalance of collection was found in the area of education (L). Aging collection is also one of the weakness as some 80% of the books are 20-40 years of age already.

By comparing the holdings with one authoritative list or standard tool – Choice Outstanding Academic Titles, Level 3, Highly recommended: a publication of high quality and relevance for academic audiences (1,355 titles), another weakness of the collection was observed (table 3). There are only few titles that were present in the collection of the College Library (DLSU Laguna Campus) and a large number of titles have not yet been purchased. DLSU Laguna Campus College Library have recorded a number of 1 title held that are listed in Choice. It also holds 1 exact title with different edition. The DLSU Learning Commons recorded 49t, UPD recorded 19t and MAPUA with 24t. If the titles held by the Learning Commons and College Library (Laguna Campus) were to be combined, DLSU will still have the greater number of titles held or purchased based on Choice recommended list but still, the titles they held only make up 5.02% of the total titles recommended by Choice for an academic library. The average acquisition of titles recommended by Choice per year of publication by DLSU Libraries yearly is 6.5%. The acquisition librarian is effective in meeting the required number of books to be purchased per year.

By conducting a usage analysis, it was found that 29t (0.18%) are heavily used, 425t (2.69%) are moderately used and 4,339 (27.48%) are lightly used. Only 30% of the collections have usage. Another observation is the high number of titles with zero usage. 10,997t (69.65%) or almost 70% of the holdings of the College have zero usage. The top 5 LC class which have the highest number of collections are also the top 5 class with zero usage collections: Language and literature (P) with 2,825t, Social sciences (H) with 2,440t, Philosophy, psychology and religion (B) with 1,526t, Sciences (Q) with 1,337t and Technology (T) with 1,130t. There could be a mismatch of titles being purchased or not align with the subject or academic interest of the students.

By conducting a percentage of expected use (PEU), it was found that the overutilized subject areas are World history and history of Europe, Asia, America, etc. (D), Music (M), Fines arts (N), Science (Q), Agriculture (S), Technology (T), and Military Science (U). Only science and technology is overutilized in the collections that are related to the course offerings of the college. The rest of the subject areas are underutilized and improvement of the collection is necessary to increase the percentage of expected usage (PEU) of those collections.

Recommendations are provided in the study for the collection development and increase of usage.

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Disciplines

Collection Development and Management

Keywords

Academic libraries—Collection development

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