LIBRARY COLLECTIONS ACQUISITIONS & TECHNICAL SERVICES最新文献

Purpose

One of the aims of library catalogs is to clearly represent the relationships existing between two or more bibliographic entities, enabling users to make sense of these relationships. Educational bibliographic relationships are the relationships between an educational work, such as a textbook, and its related works. The main interest of this study was to understand the nature of the supplementary work-to-work bibliographic relationships among educational works and the constitution of educational bibliographic families in the Canadian context using AMICUS (the Canadian national catalog). A thorough understanding of educational bibliographic relationships is required for understanding the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) supplementary relationships.

Design/methodology/approach

We studied the extent and size of educational bibliographic relationships in the bibliographic universe found in the AMICUS catalog. This is an empirical investigation into the nature and extent of educational work-to-work bibliographic relationships by examining title of works, notes and added entries in bibliographic records. The study was carried out between September 1st 2010 and December 22nd 2010 and examines educational bibliographic relationships between Canadian 2009 publications in each class of the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC). In other words, this study poses two main questions: What is the structure of educational supplementary bibliographic relationships in Canadian publications? Do significant differences exist across the ten DDC classes?

Findings

Results show that 595 works of the 2009 bibliographic records in the AMICUS catalog contain an educational supplementary bibliographic relationship. Of the Canadian publications with an educational supplementary work-to-work bibliographic relationship that were studied, the rates of educational bibliographic relationships were relatively high in the fields of Science (27%), Technology (22%), Social Sciences (20%), and Language (19%). The results of this study suggest a set of guidelines for the establishment and maintenance of educational bibliographic relationships.

Originality/value

This is the first research to examine the educational bibliographic relationships, as supplementary relationships.

How many monographs acquired in a particular year circulate in that year? What percentage have their first circulation each successive year? Does the pattern differ for different broad subject areas, i.e., humanities, the sciences, and the social sciences? This article tests the assumption that the first-circulation pattern differs by subject. We conclude that the pattern does not differ. The finding is important for decisions about off-site storage, assessing collection development, maintaining departmental libraries, etc. Regardless of subject, if a book has not circulated at least once within a few years after acquisition, it is unlikely to find its reader.

A previous study by the author of 35 titles in Elsevier's Earth and Planetary Sciences digital back file package revealed that 73.6% of the 6,038 issues published before digital format was available had at least one figure with unacceptable quality. During 2006–2009 Elsevier conducted a rescanning project to improve the quality of the images in their backfile packages for issues published prior to 1995. The author conducted a follow-up study to determine the effectiveness of Elsevier's rescanning project. Although the project corrected many problems, a noticeable number of line drawings are still unacceptable, as well as images in issues published during the 1995–1998 time period.

CALIS is a nationwide academic library consortium in China. By coordinating, guiding, and organizing academic libraries, CALIS aims to minimize spending while obtaining foreign resources with the best prices and services. It also aims to meet the demands of teaching and research via the CALIS cooperative purchase service. Since 2005, there has been a customer satisfaction survey to evaluate this cooperative purchase service and the databases subscribed to by the CALIS consortium during the CALIS annual “imported database training week”. 494 staff members from 246 libraries took part in the fourth such survey to evaluate 87 databases cooperatively purchased in 2009. According to the survey, CALIS releases database usage reports and database evaluation rankings to help libraries analysis costs and make more informed collection developments decisions. Such survey activities provide a win–win situation, not only for CALIS and its member libraries, but also for database vendors. Survey results and usage reports help libraries analyze the quality of resources and provide evidence for libraries to choose among different purchasing options. Also, more promotional work has been done to enhance understanding, solve libraries' problems, and improve service quality. Finally, survey results and database evaluation rankings have been used to urge database vendors and publishers to make improvements relevant to libraries' development strategies.