Acquisitions + Reserves and Support Services, Spring 2024

_{Spring Flowers (1864), Claude Monet, Cleveland Museum of Art, CC0 1.0 Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons}

This Spring brought many challenges, but also opportunities for anticipating and making new additions to our library collections and services. Following are some of the highlights of this work within the Technical Services unit of the library from January through May 2024.

Spring Acquisitions

Award Winners and Special Acquisitions

The library expanded our collections in a number of focused subject areas this Spring:

• New Award Winning Children’s Literature: 156 titles, listed by author here and here
• New Specially Funded Acquisitions:
  • Myers Book Acquisitions 2023-2024: 38 titles
  • Bilingual-Bicultural Education: 31 titles
  • Science Education: 28 titles
  • K-12 Education: 40 titles

Patron-Driven Acquisitions

The library also processed 235 individual requests for new materials (in Ebook and print format):

• 142 new book requests
• 93 new course reserve titles
• 6 unfilled requests

Invoice Processing

In the absence of our Head of Technical Services, our Library Assistant for Acquisitions created 60 invoices within our library services platform, Alma, for outstanding book purchases.

Teachers College Record

The library assessed our print Teachers College Record collection, to inventory the number of volumes requiring binding and to prepare for a project to ensure that issues from 2011-2023 are bound, and that new print issues will be bound in 3 volumes, per year, going forward.

Spring Course Reserves

The library entered our third Spring term with Course Resource Lists—our course reserves platform, integrated with Educat+, and located directly within credit-bearing courses in Canvas.

Some quick statistics for the Spring term:

• 145 instructors utilized Course Resource Lists
• The library fulfilled 174 lists containing 3,328 citations
• The library acquired 93 new titles for course reserves, as noted above
• The library licensed 14 streaming films for course reserves
• The library purchased and permissioned 19 articles, not held in our collections, for course reserves
  • Total copyright spending for Spring 2024: $3,214.23

We were pleased to see that our Course Resource List usage continues to grow, slowly but steadily each consecutive semester. Spring 2024 surpasses Fall 2023 as our highest usage term, with a modest 3% increase in number of lists, but a 20% increase in number of instructors served.

Course Resource Lists Rollover

In April, our Web Services & Systems librarian facilitated the rollover of last summer's Course Resource Lists into Summer 2024 courses. 40 lists were rolled over and proofread in anticipation of the summer terms.

Course Resource Lists New User Experience

The library also continued work to prepare for switching on the New User Interface of Course Resources Lists in late Summer 2024. This required checking and setting a number of Course Resource List configurations, testing the interface’s color schemes for accessibility, and working with Ex Libris (submitting many support tickets) to ensure that all features were working as expected.

Only the interface of Course Resource Lists—designed by Ex Libris to upgrade the platform’s usability, performance, and accessibility—will change. Course Resource List users can rest assured that previously created lists and citations will remain in the system. The library will introduce a new Course Resource List guide, as well as offer a workshop, to walk instructors through the new interface in the coming weeks.

Acquisition of ABBYY FineReader

In the hopes of improving our PDF remediation processes, and making them more efficient, librarians explored various PDF remediation solutions to replace or supplement Adobe Acrobat, our current PDF software. After comparing products and relative costs, and meeting with the Office of Access and Services for Individuals with Disabilities (OASID), the library went forward with acquiring a license for ABBYY FineReader for PC in May. Librarians are excited to learn and incorporate ABBYY FineReader into their PDF remediation workflows during the Summer.

Physical Course Reserve Shifting

At the end of the Spring term, the library conducted an analysis of our print course reserve collection (held at the first-floor library services desk, and available for renewable two-hour loan) to determine how often materials were circulating. More than 900 items that were not on current Course Resource Lists, or that had not circulated for several semesters, were shifted back to the stacks. This will allow patrons to borrow these 900-plus items for regular, semester-length loan periods. This also allowed us to make room for future print course reserve acquisitions, and to ensure that our reserve collection is up to date.

Spring Resource Sharing

In the Spring 2024 term, the library continued our digital and physical Interlibrary Loan (ILL) services for current TC faculty and students, via OCLC Worldshare. We are pleased to, again, have renewed membership in OCLC’s Express Program, a group of institutions delivering digital resources with an average turnaround time of 18 hours or less.

Some quick statistics for the Spring 2024 term:

• The library borrowed 211 items:
  • 42 print book loans
  • 169 article/chapter copies
• The library lent 44 items:
  • 9 print books
  • 35 article/chapter copies
• The library responded to 357 requests from TC faculty and students
• 9 unfilled patron requests 

Spending for ILL borrowing from January through May 2024: $1,848.00

This was offset by fees charged for ILL lending from January through May 2024: $440.00

Total ILL fee expenditure for January through May 2024 (via OCLC IFM): $1,408.00

We were pleased to see our ILL borrowing (i.e. materials borrowed for TC patrons) increase again after noting a decrease in items borrowed during the Fall 2023 semester.

Librarians continued to attend monthly Columbia Access Services and Operations Coordination (ASOCC) Committee meetings to keep abreast of changes at Columbia University Morningside campus libraries that may affect our patrons. We were also pleased to join the ASOCC Reserve sub-committee, and also to have joined Columbia Libraries’ Open Access Week 2024 planning committee.

The library also maintained its presence in the semesterly METRO ILL special interest group and continued to participate in OCLC SHARES lending group Town Hall meetings.