College and Research Libraries OLIVIA OPELLO and LINDSAY MURDOCK Acquisitions Overkill in Science Collections -and an Alternative Science libraries buy many unneeded books in the effort to provide all needed books. Since books are the least-used source of information for physicists and other scientists, highly selective, obiective cnteria need to be developed and applied to book selection so as to limit ac- quisitions to items really needed. At the same time science libraries should increase their provision of the awareness services that research- ers need. LIBRARIANS HAVE LONG RECOGNIZED that . the volume of acquisitions is outgrow- ing available library space. Incredibly, their proposed solutions to the space problem have centered around weeding and storage techniques rather than analysis of selection criteria. Librarians are treating the symptoms instead of the cause of the problem while they continue to indulge in acquisitions over- kill. Even in today's tight economy, while austerity measures are being ap- plied in the "management of decline," librarians have not been motivated to examine their library goals and their ac- quisitions policies as part of the prob- lem.1 Their solution is now one of handwringing about the lack of funds to buy still more materials. They might better consider Buckland's comment that "as with cooking, expenditure on ingredients does not guarantee the qual- ity of the product."2 Olivia OpeUo is assistant librarian, State University of New York at Albany. Lindsay Murdock is science writer! editor, U.S. De- partment of Commerce, Naticnal Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Boulder, Colorado. 452 I It is true that during the last two dec- ades of afHuence and growth, libraries have been awarded prestige and recogni- tion for quantity, but only because, as De Gennaro notes, there are no estab- lished measures of quality for li- braries. 3 Selection policies that try to keep up with Books in Print have re- sulted in collections of which only a small percentage are essential to support users' needs. When space and funds are limited, and quantity does not insure quality, is the addition of the one-mil- lionth volume to the collection today cause for celebration, relief, or embar- rassment? Most science libr.ary patrons would agree that the librarian's role is one of service. Chen reports that academic physicists in the greater Boston area "view the librarian . . . mainly as house- keeper, organizer, and manager of li- brary materials."4 This perception of the librarian is probably as commonly held by librarians as by patrons. Trying to maintain such a service image, li- brarians set themselves the goal of satis- fying the readers who want their books "now." That is, the book has been pur- chased, cataloged, and is already sitting · H • on the shelf when the patron requests it. To achieve this goal, as long as the money lasts, librarians sift through thousands of advertisements and write out hundreds of order slips, following an acquisitions program whose purpose, in part, is to get as much material as possible into the library and onto the shelf. Most succeed in getting the want- ed books bought, so that the patron will find the title in the card catalog even if the book is not on the shelf. The li- brarian is satisfied when a wanted book is thus "available." However, to achieve this goal, libraries buy, process, and use up shelf space with a multitude of other books that are not wanted. USE OF CoLLECI'IONS Trueswell found some years ago that a library's holdings might be reduced by as much as 60 to 80 percent and still satisfy at least 90 percent of user re- quirements.5 His research and that of Fussier and Simon have provided foun- dations for weeding and storage theo- ries. 6 Regardless of the kind of library, the criteria for weeding and storage are developed from the following: expert opinion regarding the importance of book to subject area; subject content of book (interdisciplinary approach or highly specialized topic that may be cov- ered or duplicated in more extensive studies); professional reputation of au- thor; language of book; publication date; circulation record. The circulation record is relied on most heavily for deciding, first, which books should be placed in storage and then, later, for testing the decision on the basis of how many times a stored book has been retrieved. Most studies show that after an initial burst of circu- lation, usually during the first year after a book ·is acquired, circulation drops dramatically. _This has been especially true for books in scientific subjects, al- though it has been less so for humani- · Acquisitions Overkill I 453 ties and social science subjects. Buck- land reports that "it has been found consistently that the annual usage of books declines with age in a negative exponential pattem."7 Fussier and Si- mon found that objective tests of use- fulness, such as circulation and publica- tion date, agreed with subjective opin- ions about economics and chemistry ma- terials. 8 There was less agreement, how- ever, for language and literature publi- cations. During a weeding project .at the li- brary of the National Oceanic and At- mospheric Administration, U.S. Depart- ment of Commerce, Boulder, Colorado, a library whose holdings are primarily in mathematics and physics, it was found that there was almost total agree- ment between scientists' opinions and objective crlteria (set by librarians) rec- ommending books to be withdrawn from the collection. A study of circula- tion records of books purchased be- tween July 1971 and June 1973 also supports other findings that after initial interest the circulation of the majority of new books drops close to zero. At the same time, a few long-held titles con- tinued to circulate at a steady rate. It is recognized that circulation can- not give a complete record of a book's use. However, there does appear to be a consistent relationship between book circulation and total book use. Recent studies have estimated ratios between numbers of books circulated and books consulted in the library.9• 10 The data in- dicate that out-of-library use generally exceeds in-library use. THE CosTS How much does a science book cost? According to the Bowker Annual of Li- brary and Book Trade Information, 1975, the average price of a science book in 197 4 was $20.83, an increase of 73 percent from the $12.67 figure listed for the 1967-69 period. It should be evi- dent to any administrator providing 454 I College & Research Libraries • September 1976 funds for libraries that more money, and lots of it, is immediately needed. But how would that same administrator respond if he realized that $20.83 is only the cost of the actual volume and that the real cost to the library is closer to three to four times the cost of the book after the library adds the cost of selection, ordering, cataloging, new item preparation, collection storage (shelf- space), and maintenance ( card-filing).11 It might be wise to wait until next year before asking that administrator for special funds to weed the collection and place that $60.00-$80.00 book in storage! INFORMATION NEEDS What do scientists need from a li- brary, and what do they get? Are they the same thing? The National Research Council has analyzed the needs of physicists and de- scribed their information requirements for the future in Physics in Perspec- tive.12 This study indicates that phys- icists spend approximately fifteen hours a week receiving scientific information or discussing it. Most of their informa- tion comes from browsing the journal literature. This finding is corroborated by Chen and Hagstrom.13• 14 Physicists' other important information source is oral and/ or written communication with colleagues. Surprisingly (to a librarian), books and reviews provide only a small fraction of scientists' leads. Discussion of book materials in Physics in Perspec- tive reflects this, being limited to a few paragraphs, with note of the need for ~'Progress . . ." titles and a hope that conference proceedings will be pub- lished more extensively in the journal literature rather than in isolated books. While such .a brief concern indicates a limited need for books, as opposed to journals, the focus of the concern is · a good clue to what few books wiU prove useful. Physicists emphasize their need for interdisciplinary works and review liter- ature. The point is made that awareness of relevant literature in areas neighbor- ing the specialty of a typical physicist is inadequate mostly because of the rap- id rate of production of new informa- tion. In addition, advancing knowledge is continually establishing relations be- tween fields that were previously un- related. Getting a copy of a needed item is not the scientisf s real communications problem; rather, it is being aware of what exists. IMPLICATIONs FOR SELECTION Poucms If a constant concern of librarians is to establish criteria for weeding books and if physicists and other scientists are less likely to use books than any other mode of information transmission, the implication is that libraries are buying books no one needs. When we ask our- selves if we need to keep that book, we are revealing that we should have asked earlier if we needed to buy that book. (In weeding programs, one circulation in thirty-six months may save a book from storage but the real question is: Should the book have been bought orig- inally?) The challenge to science librarians is to develop objective selection criteria, applicable to most standard advertise- ments, that will predict usefulness of a book quickly, easily, and accurately. With such selection criteria, book pur- chases would be limited by true and ef- fective selectivity. For example, book purchases might be limited to reviews and collections; a few publishers' se- ries; conference proceedings; "new'' subjects; treatments of "new" relation- ships; and works by noted authors in relevant subject areas. That's not too different from what is done now, is it? Except for the "in- troduction to . ... " and a few "How to's," and some other really interesting titles like Future Shock. They loved Fu- ture . Shock, you say? So did we, in the r r public library. But, you say, there are some books with really good scientific titles; lots of them are purchased every year. We think we understand. Are those now in the 80 percent you could put in storage? A lot of them are, ac- cording to research findings; and they are the ones that are unnecessarily ruin- ing your budget and your supply of shelf space. Physics in Perspective suggests that "an innovation that would reduce by X percent the total time physicists need to spend in all types of communications to get a given yield of useful informa- tion would be equivalent to augmenting the man-years employed by an amount two or three times now spent in commu- nications."15 Such an innovation would represent a savings of millions of dol- lars. Can that innovation be a change in the kind of service libraries now pro- vide? If the scientists' real difficulty is not getting a copy of the journal or re- port they need but, rather, keeping aware of what is currently available, cannot the librarian do more to keep them aware of the new literature? Both current awareness services using the data bases available through on-line information retrieval and the more tra- ditional abstracting and indexing tools can keep the scientist up to date in jour- nal and technical report literature. The library can supplement these services by obtaining a copy of what the researcher wishes to see. Librarians functioning as information transfer specialists can maximize use of the library's resources and services by more direct interaction with departments, classes, laboratories, Acquisitions Overkill I 455 etc.16 Librarians need to get out from behind the reference desk if they hope to make the library's resources a more integral and viable part of research and education. Such an approach will call for a shift in library priorities. The first priority will now be keeping the sci- entist aware; provision of material will follow. Those librarians who fear that extensive information retrieval service will erode the traditional demands made on libraries will be pleased at reports in- dicating information retrieval services have brought new users to the library and produced an enhanced awareness of the total range of library services.I7 The cost of on-line information re- trieval systems is prohibitively expensive for individuals but not for libraries. Most libraries could support, individual- ly or jointly, on-line information re- trieval with their savings from sensible acquisitions policies. Like any basic ref- erence service it could and should be done at no extra cost to the patron. (If someone asks you the chairman's name of an academic department, do you tell him it's a 25-cent question and when he deposits his quarter you'll give him the answer?) Library patterns can change. We have seen . services such as the Ohio College Library Center make obsolete the con- cept of extensive local original catalog- ing. We must consider the possibility that library service which only provides a book ··now" -is also obsolete. Librari- ans can continue to be housekeepers, or they can support their organizations by contributing to the real needs of re- search. REFERENCES 1. C. James Schmidt, •'Resource Allocation in University Libraries in the 1970s and Be- yond," Library Trends 23:643-49 (April 1975). 2. Michael K. Buckland, Book AooilabllUy and the Libraf'fJ User (New York: Per- gamon, 1975), p.39. 3. Richard De Gennaro, "Austerity, Technolo- gy, and Resource Sharing: Research Li- braries Face the Future," Library Journal 456 I College & Research Libraries • September 1976 100:917-23 (May 15, 1975). 4. Ching-chich Chen, "How Do Scientists Meet Their Information Needs?" Special Libraries 65:278 (July 1974). 5. Richard W. Trueswell, "A Quantitative Measure of User Circulation Requirements and Its Possible Effect on Stack Thinning and Multiple Copy Determination," Ameri- can Documentation 16:20-24 (Jan. 1965). 6. Herman H. Fussier and Julian L. Simon, Patterns in the Use of Books in Large Re- search Libraries (Chicago: Univ. of Chi- cago Pr. , 1961). 7. Buckland, Book Availability and the Li- brary User, p.12. 8. Fussier and Simon, Patterns in the Use of Books, p.llB-29. 9. Carol A. Seymour, "Weeding the Collec- tion: A Review of Research on Identifying Obsolete Stock," Libri 22:137-48 ( 1972). 10. William E. McGrath, .. Correlating the Sub- jects of Books Taken Out of and Books Used within an Open-Stack Library," Col- lege & Research Libraries 32:280-85 (July 1971). 11. Jeffrey A. Raffel and Robert Shishko, Sys- tematic Analysis of University Libraries: An Application of Cost-Benefit Analysis to the M.l.T. Libraries (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Pr., 1969), p.5. 12. National Research Council, Physics Survey Committee, Physics in Perspective, vol.l (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1972). 13. Chen, "How Do Scientists Meet Their In- formation Needs?" p.273-75. 14. Warren 0. Hagstrom, "Factors Related to the Use of Different Modes of Publishing Research in Four Scientific Fields," in Camot E. Nelson and Donald K. Pollock, eds., Communication Among Scientists and Engineers (Lexington, Mass.: Heath Lex- ington Books, 1970), p.85-124. 15. National Research Council, Physics in Per- spective 1:902. 16. Conversation with Bernard Dennis, Office of Biological Services, Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Department of Interior, Washington, D.C. 17. Jeffrey J. Gardner, David Wax, and R. D. Morrison, Jr., "The Delivery of Computer- Based Bibliographic Search Services by Academic and Research Libraries," ARL Management Supplement 2 (Sept. 197 4). 1 -