Navigating Mountains of Books: Using Title Matching to Convert Physical Collections to “E”

Editor's Notes

• #8: Belmont is a private, Christian, liberal arts University in Nashville, TN with a student body of approximately 8,700. Bunch Library has 16 library faculty and staff. As the Asset Management Librarian, I manage both our print and electronic collections and my area has three other people who help me with that. We work closely with the three Access Services staff to maintain the library’s physical collection. Access Services also has more than 15 student workers, without whom the library wouldn’t be able to function. We have been doing e-preferred purchasing since Fall 2015, and we subscribe to several ebook packages, including ProQuest’s Academic Complete. Before I talk about our work with Title Match Fast, I want to provide a little background on Belmont and Bunch Library over the last few years – we’ve had a lot going on!
• #9: In June 2016, we went live with Alma. This was also the first time ProQuest mentioned TMF, but we didn’t take advantage of it yet. In Summer 2017, we set a goal of weeding the physical collection in the library to help free up space for student seating. We are now approximately halfway through that project (scheduled to be finished by 2020) In December 2017, the library basement was closed to students. The basement held approximately 75,000 books in LC classifications A-F, so we had to move the books around (based on the deselection lists we had created) so they would still be accessible. A few years lager, in 2021, we converted half of the basement to compact shelving – still housing 75,000 books, but in half the footprint. The other half was converted to office for the Information Technology Services staff. Summer of 2019 was dedicated to refreshing the entire library, so we moved every book and bookshelf while having new paint and carpet installed. New furniture was also provided for the first floor, to help refresh the look of the library. Last year, we also added additional compact shelving on the first floor to hold 30,000 books for our Art & Architecture library space. In addition to all of this, Belmont has also merged with two local art colleges since 2016. We added part of both collections from O’More College of Art and Watkins School of Art and Design to our physical collection. And, of course, in 2020 and 2021… and 2022…. We dealt with building closures and moving classes and services online at a moment’s notice for COVID-19.
• #10: Among all of the other changes we’ve experienced, Belmont has made use of ProQuest’s Title Match Fast service several times, and in a couple of different ways. We’ve always experienced a very quick turnaround when we’ve requested TMF lists because we are an Alma library, so we provide ProQuest with written permission and they pull the data out of Alma for us. We received our first list in April 2019, and I compared the titles on that list to the titles that we had marked to keep. In May 2019, we made our first TMF purchase, converting approximately 70 books in LC Classification L to ebooks. This was determined by the end of year funds we had available and what area we could convert completely. The TMF lists also let us know what titles were available in our Academic Complete subscription so that we could avoid purchasing those (and also pull them from the shelves). In June 2020, we requested a list of title that we had in both print and electronic format to use to remove duplicate titles from our shelves. This removed about 550 books from our shelves, freeing up precious shelf space for us. We did confirm that the print and electronic versions were the same before pulling them from the shelves. In December 2020, we requested a list to see what it would cost to convert our entire collection to print for budget planning purposes. We learned that of the 250,000+ titles in our collection, 3,951 were available as ebooks at a cost of $60,000+. (We did not convert all of them at that time). In May 2021, we made a series of end of year purchases to convert about 232 print books to electronic. These decisions were again based on the funds we had available and which complete lists we could purchase. In addition to a fast turnaround on receiving the lists, we also had super fast turnaround on the invoices (thanks Bethany!), which was crucial, since our fiscal year ends on May 31.
• #11: TMF is often one of our first choices for end of year purchases. Will be using Hathi Trust lists (from Green Glass reports) to pull books that are available there off the shelf as well – this will allow us to possibly pull nearly 10,000 matches. Approximately 4,000 in the Ps. DESELECTION FINISHED: A, B, C, G, H, M, J, K, L, Q, U, V, Z; Juvenile; Curriculum Lab; VHS + Cassette tapes; CDs; DVDs (approximately half of the collection) DESELECTION REMAINING: E, F, P, R, S, T In addition to TMF reports, we have also requested that ProQuest assist us in creating lists of book titles for us to consider adding to our collection in selected areas that the university is adding new programs. We’re looking to add titles that come highly recommended (like Choice, OAT, RCL, etc.) in specific areas of growth – we recently added two new PhD programs in Educational Leadership and Mental Health Counseling, and we are also increasing our resources for Architecture and Fashion Design.  And, of course, we’re adding a medical school.