Using Online Catalogs to Evaluate Science Collections for a Group of Institutions

Abstract

Collection evaluation for groups of institutions is needed when planning for cooperative buying, and for building collections across libraries. This is becoming more and more important as cost constraints confront academic libraries, and as new organizational groupings are developed. The experience with OhioLINK's physics collection evaluation, using the search capabilities of the online catalog, illustrates one avenue for approaching cooperative collection development.

Key Words:

• Collection development
• collection evaluation
• college and university libraries
• cooperation
• scientific and technical libraries