Managing the changing climate of business collections

Abstract

Librarians that support business programs are weathering competing priorities in business collection management driven by requests from faculty and students, increasing resource costs with limited budgets, institutional and state requirements for accessibility, and the desire to support social justice. Librarians are walking a tight rope when managing collections, balancing changing collection budgets with the need to purchase data, databases, and other resources that are often proprietary in order to support the research and learning needs of their patrons. When making decisions to cut and add new databases, we must assess the value of a given resource considering a variety of quantitative metrics such as usage, cost/per use, cost/citation, and pricing history. In addition, qualitative criteria is increasingly important when making decisions. This criteria includes, but is not limited to, content coverage, accessibility, and whether a resource can be provided in a way that supports the principles of critical librarianship.

The speakers will provide brief presentations on different aspects of collection management and assessment for business resources. Topics to be covered: • Determining the value of existing resources using metrics for holistic collection analysis and individual resource analysis, • Critical librarianship and the selection of new business resources, • Managing accessibility requirements with business resources.

After the brief presentations provided by our speakers, the audience is invited to engage in a conversation about the topics presented as well as share how they are evaluating and making collection decisions. What are top priorities? What are sticking points with resources and/or vendors? This will be an opportunity for librarians and vendors to create a dialogue in regards to challenges and priorities that are being considered when making collection decisions.