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Brief Tests of Collection Strength A Methodology for All Types of Libraries
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Howard D. White
Book Code: GM9753
ISBN: 0-313-29753-3
ISBN-13: 978-0-313-29753-3
208 pages, figures, tables
Greenwood Press
Publication: 9/30/1995
List Price: $112.95 (UK Sterling Price: £65.00)
Availability: Out of stock
Media Type: Hardcover
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects: Reviews:
  • This work is an important contribution to collection development. White provides ample graphs, charts, and tables to support the well-written text... Applications of 'brief tests' should be particularly useful in helping to identify general gaos in a collection and to determine the adequacy of past support for particular areas of the collection.
    —
    Collection Management
  • White exhibits the results of hundreds of trials in many different subjects of dozens of American libraries and provides a scheme for giving test designers greater control over the difficulty of brief tests.
    —
    C&RL News
  • For those one-person libraries who manage collections of books and other printed materials, this evaluation tool will prove to be a very helpful aid indeed.
    —The One-Person Library
Description: In a time of increasing material and limited resources, libraries need to be particularly judicious in deciding which works to acquire. Oftentimes, a library seeks to develop strong holdings in one or more subject areas. Such an approach is especially useful for libraries that share their resources with other institutions. To plan their acquisitions carefully and to be of greatest use to other consortia members, a library needs to gauge the strength of its holdings accurately. This volume describes and illustrates a relatively brief test to assign libraries a score for existing collection strength in a subject area. Drawing upon expert human judgment and holdings data available from OCLC, the test can assist librarians in setting and verifying collection levels on the RLG or WLN Conspectus scales. Collection strength is often verified in a labor-intensive fashion. The brief test presented by the author is an economical alternative to the more typical labor-intensive approach to collection analysis.
Table of Contents:
  • The Methodology
  • A Collection-Centered Measure for All Types of Libraries
  • Problems of the Past
  • The Logic of the Test
  • Results
  • Setting Levels
  • Verifying Levels
  • Gains in Strength through a Consortium
  • The French Literature Test
  • Creating New Tests
  • The OCLC Database and Holdings Counts
  • Bibliography
  • Appendix A: Eight Specimen Brief Tests
  • Appendix B: Additional Brief Tests
LC Card Number: 95-2904
LCC Class: Z687
Dewey Class: 025
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