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Reference Purchasing

Reference Purchasing. MLA Conference 2010 Patricia Gregory Deb Katz Patrick Wall. Public Libraries. The Reference Collection. PubLib / RSS Survey. The community served:. For Public Libraries . The survey question was:. Reference Materials Budget Last 5 years. 62.1% Decreased.

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Reference Purchasing

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  1. Reference Purchasing MLA Conference 2010 Patricia Gregory Deb Katz Patrick Wall

  2. Public Libraries The Reference Collection

  3. PubLib / RSS Survey

  4. The community served:

  5. For Public Libraries

  6. The survey question was:

  7. Reference Materials Budget Last 5 years

  8. 62.1% Decreased. • But, 16.3% stayed the same, and an additional 16.3% actually increased.

  9. Our Reference Budgets • “It has decreased, but so have all of our other book-buying budgets. I don't think it has decreased in a greater proportion than the other budgets (for fiction, YA, etc.)”. • “. . . the budget for online reference databases has increased, but those funds do not come out of the referencebudget” • “We weeded our reference. We are moving to online products”

  10. What we are buying:

  11. 59% purchasing databases infrequently or not at all.

  12. What we are buying:

  13. 95% Purchase Infrequently or not at all. Though: “Databases and Ebooks are a separate budget item”. “Databases & e-book purchases are made before I get the budget”. “We buy Ebooks, but not for reference.”

  14. What we are buying:

  15. 48% yea to 52% nay on print Is Print dead or just badly wounded for reference? Is it just the economy? Is it a reference question if it is asked of your database without your help?

  16. What our patrons are using:

  17. What our patrons are using:

  18. What our patrons are (still) using:

  19. Percentages • Databases—Holding steady, increasing. • Ebooks –Maybe the wave of the future, but smaller libraries are not buying now. • Print– Its death has been foretoldfor many years now.

  20. How we determine what our patrons want in our reference collections? We have got to ask.

  21. How we determine what our patrons want? • Patron Survey • SurveyMonkey-Free to cheap, great for quick, short surveys. • Zoomerang. • Counting Opinions-Library specific, great control, on the expensive side. • Wufoo.com. • Google Docs survey tool.

  22. But ask them. Ask them what they like to use. Ask them what questions we are not able to help them answer. Ask them if they would like to check out what was formerly reference material.

  23. Other methods libraries use: • Vendor counts – tells you something, but maybe not what you want to know. • In house use-scanning print materials-or shelvers keep a log of what goes back without being scanned. • Reference staff keeps track of questions they have difficulty answering-shops for item to fill the hole in the collection

  24. The future of reference purchasing, the vendor reps: • “I think that the purchase of print reference will continue to decline and electronic will continue to rise”.-vendor rep • “They [Libraries] are purchasing both formats, but print still predominates. . . there seems to be more talk about ebooks than purchasing”.-A different vendor rep.

  25. We purchase as part of a cooperative system for e-books and databases, in-house for print materials, print is in response to patron needs. • I think we do better with the print materials than we do with the databases - after all, so many people use the databases remotely that it's hard to tell whether they are satisfied.

  26. Where do you find it (once you know what form it is in)? Outstanding Reference Sources list from RUSA CODES-on the RUSA Awards page (along with the previous nine years of lists) and in RUSQ.

  27. RUSA CODES Outstanding Reference Sources • The Selections for 2010 • Archaeology in America: An Encyclopedia (Greenwood Press), Francis P. McManamon • Encyclopedia of African American History: 1896 to the Present (Oxford University Press), Paul Finkelman • Encyclopedia of Modern China (Charles Scribner’s Sons), David Pong • The Encyclopedia of the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (ABC-CLIO), Spencer Tucker • Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy (Gale Cengage), J. Baird Callicott and Robert Frodeman • Encyclopedia of Human Rights (Oxford), David Forsythe • Social Explorer, an online reference resource • Broadway Plays and Musicals: Descriptions and Essential Facts (McFarland & Company Publishers), Thomas S. Hischak • American Countercultures (Sharp), Gina Misiroglu • Encyclopedia of Gender and Society (Sage), Jodi O’Brien • Encyclopedia of Marine Science (Facts on File), C. Reid Nichols and Robert G. Williams

  28. Where do you find it?-continued

  29. Library Journal-Reviews in each issue, eReviews, and their best of the year.

  30. Booklist

  31. Kirkus Reference Supplement

  32. What do we think?

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