Are We Spending Too Much on Print STEM Monographs? A Method and Analysis for Improving Monograph Allocations Based on Circulation Statistics

Circulation studies provide evidence of demand for monographs, but it is necessary to determine the goal of any analysis in order to select which statistics will be used. The goal of this analysis was to determine the appropriateness of expenditures on monographs within the STEM fields at Morris Library over a ten-year period. Percentage of unique title circulation and average circulation per title are best suited for this purpose. Results show variation among discplines, but over-expenditure in all. Analysis of disciplines can aid in determining appropriate allocations for monographs, and analysis of subdisciplines can aid in targeting monograph acquisitions within any discipline

Leaving the Big Deal: Consequences and Next Steps

Many libraries are facing difficult fiscal climates with serials inflation, budget cutbacks, and reductions in allocations requiring difficult collection management decisions. Libraries may find their flexibility to plan and react unduly restricted due to being contracted to one or more Big Deals, in which they are obligated to buy large, inflexible title lists from big publishers for a set price. This presentation discusses the experience of Southern Illinois University Carbondale and the University of Oregon in leaving Big Deals, provides data on impacts on interlibrary loans, community response, and collection budgets, details the steps required before and after the decision, and describes the benefits that other libraries could achieve by following the example of these two members of the Association of Research Libraries

OpenSIUC Talking Points

Answers to common questions about institutional repositorie

Dissertation Citations in Organismal Biology at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale: Implications for Collection Development

We report on a citation analysis of PhD dissertations in Plant Biology and Zoology at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, undertaken to test the common assumption that scientists favor current research to such an extent that journal backfiles can be de-emphasized in academic library collections. Results demonstrate otherwise. The study is reproducible for any institution, and can help to evaluate 1) the value of electronic journal backfiles and 2) the need to maintain print backfiles

Leaving the “Big Deal” … Five Years Later

Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIUC) and the University of Oregon each withdrew from several Big Deals with major commercial journal publishers from 2008 to 2010. Analysis of the impact of these decisions was originally conducted and reported in 2011 and 2012. This article provides updated analysis based on interlibrary loan statistics, financial savings, and impact on the collections. Results show that interlibrary loan of lost content still represents a small fraction of prior use, savings have been considerable, and the libraries have been able to address other needs in their collections because of the decision to withdraw

Renewable Electric Energy Integration: Quantifying the Value of Design of Markets for International Transmission Capacity

Integrating large quantities of supply-driven renewable electricity generation remains a political and operational challenge. One of the main obstacles in Europe to installing at least 200 GWs of power from variable renewable sources is how to deal with the insufficient network capacity and the congestion that will result from new flow patterns. We model the current methodology for controlling congestion at international borders and compare its results, under varying penetrations of wind power, with a model that simulates an integrated European network that utilises nodal/localised marginal pricing. The nodal pricing simulations illustrate that congestion - and price - patterns vary considerably between wind scenarios and within countries, and that a nodal price regime could make fuller use of existing EU network capacity, introducing substantial operational cost savings and reducing marginal power prices in the majority of European countries.Power market design, renewable power integration, congestion management, transmission economics

Foraging behaviour and fuel accumulation of capital breeders during spring migration as derived from a combination of satellite- and ground-based observations

The work was supported by Aarhus Univ., Denmark, the Norwegian Research Council (project MIGRAPOP, granted to I. Tombre) and the Schure-Beijerinck-Popping Fund (granted to BAN).The migration strategy of many capital breeders is to garner body stores along the flyway at distinct stopover sites. The rate at which they can fuel is likely to be strongly influenced by a range of factors, such as physiology, food availability, time available for foraging and perceived predation. We analysed the foraging behaviour and fuel accumulation of pink-footed geese, an Arctic capital breeder, at their mid-flyway spring stopover site and evaluated to what extent their behaviour and fuelling were related to physiological and external factors and how it differed from other stopovers along the flyway. We found that fuel accumulation rates of geese at the mid-flyway site were limited by habitat availability rather than by digestive constraints. However, as the time available for foraging increased over the stopover season, geese were able to keep constant fuelling rate. Putting this in perspective, geese increased their daily net energy intake along the flyway corresponding to the increase in time available for foraging. The net energy intake per hour of foraging remained the same. Geese showed differences in their reaction to predators/disturbance between the sites, taking higher risks particularly at the final stopover site. Hence, perceived predation along the flyway may force birds to postpone the final fuel accumulation to the last stopover along the flyway. Flexibility in behaviour appears to be an important trait to ensure fitness in this capital breeder. Our findings are based on a new, improved method for estimating fuel accumulation of animals foraging in heterogeneous landscapes based on data obtained from satellite telemetry and habitat specific intake rates.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe