Trend Analysis of Monograph Acquisitions in Public and University Libraries in the UK

Citation

Revill, D. (2000), "Trend Analysis of Monograph Acquisitions in Public and University Libraries in the UK", New Library World, Vol. 101 No. 6, pp. 282-287. https://doi.org/10.1108/nlw.2000.101.6.282.1

This report uses the samples taken to monitor the currency and availability of the BNB/MARC records to plot acquisition trends since 1980. Analyses are by subject, acquisition date compared with publication date, format (hard or paperback)and price.

Stock retention was also analysed in five university and five public libraries to see what percentage of titles were still in stock some years on. A total of 17 public and 17 academic libraries are involved annually. In all, some 26,000 records, collected over 20 years, form the database. Fiction and children’s books were poorly represented in the public library data for reasons given.

It is perhaps justifiable to express some concern when a sample drawn for one purpose is used for quite another. This reviewer has few doubts that most, if not all, university libraries would have quite sophisticated analyses already of their monograph acquisitions. Such is the competition for university resources that teaching departments are frequently allocated funds for the purchase of books and journals, either nominally or actually. This then disposes of the problem of rising journals costs, undergraduate versus research needs and much more. The ball is passed to the academics to prioritise regardless of the effect this might have on their undergraduates. Librarians then report on actual expenditures and numbers of items bought. Using these data a “census” might have been possible. Some discussion on the use of the BNB/MARC samples, rather than a new, direct approach, would have been welcome and appropriate. These are sampled data but no confidence limits are given.

The report suggests certain lessons for publishers and booksellers. It is perhaps overdue for publishers to consider issuing “expensive” titles only in electronic form. The findings are interesting. In terms of acquisition dates, more than three‐quarters of public library acquisitions were made in the year of publication or that following, whereas academic libraries purchased a greater proportion of older texts. This somewhat surprised the authors, in that they had expected the reverse. “On approval” schemes, where booksellers select titles for preview by public librarians, may be having an undue influence. The authors label this “supplier selection”. In both sectors stock revision is probably suffering because of the pressures on staff to simply keep the doors open.

In academic libraries the “most surprising feature was the dominance of social sciences, which took a massive 40‐45 per cent of all acquisitions throughout the 1990s” (p. 2). In contrast, science acquisitions fell, not apparently related to any changes in student numbers. An explanation of this phenomenon, not offered in this publication, is again that science departments have probably chosen to protect their journals, which have taken a disproportionate percentage of their budgets because of inflation, at the expense of their book acquisitions (a not unknown practice).

On price it appears that public libraries purchase above the Bookseller average price of all publications for fiction and below it for non‐fiction. Academic libraries’ average prices were below the median price of all academic books published. This suggests that both sectors’ users are being denied access to the more expensive titles – an outcome possibly contrary to institutions’ intentions.

One significant element in the process, which would be worth further research, is that of the selection process itself. It may be that selection is somewhat arbitrary rather than “balanced”, through such influences as late approval of allocated funds, large desiderata lists being built up, late “freezes” on spending, mismatch of the academic year with the publishing seasons, etc.

An interesting publication. It raises important questions but the answers have probably more to do with tight and declining budgets for both materials and staff, rather than anything else. “Balanced” acquisitions policies and practices require adequate resources for their proper implementation.