The Freedom Collection 2017–2021: Part 2, UNCL Members’ Subject Usage Preferences and Profiles

With data supplied by a colleague, the author looked into the by-subject downloading activities of the members of the University of Nebraska Consortium of Libraries (UNCL): University of Nebraska at Kearney, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, University of Nebraska Medical Center, and University of Nebraska Omaha

The Freedom Collection 2017–2021: Part 1, The Composition of the Freedom Collection and UNCL’s Downloads by Member and Subject

With data provided by a colleague, the author looked at the University of Nebraska Consortium of Libraries (UNCL) downloading activity of Elsevier\u27s Freedom Collection for the 2017-2021 interval. Members include the University of Nebraska at Kearney, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, University of Nebraska Medical Center, and University of Nebraska Omaha. The author looked at activity by member and by subject at the level of journals\u27 Library of Congress Classifications. This report was submitted in the fall of 2022 to the UNL Libraries Collections Strategies Committee (CSC) and to the members of the Collections Strategies and Open Scholarship (CSOS) department

UNL’s Wiley Journal Downloads: 2014-2020

Because the field of librarianship has been examining its relationship to commercial academic publishers and their \u27Big Deal\u27 journal packages, the authors elected to examine one such package, Wiley\u27s. The authors\u27 hoped to determine whether the University of Nebraska-Lincoln\u27s usage was concentrated enough and consistent enough over a multi-year interval for download data to be useful in identifying journals for hypothetical individual subscriptions or for inclusion in a hypothetical smaller, UNL-specific package

UnSub: Sundry Thoughts, Employing Data from the Wiley e-Journal Package

The authors reviewed the UnSub tool using journal download data from Wiley for 2020. Some of the lead author\u27s concerns with cancelling the Wiley journal package and proceeding with UnSub\u27s Open Access-dependent approach are detailed

UNL Libraries Book Use by Broad Discipline (Social Sciences, Sciences, and Humanities): Circulations and Renewals: Books Acquired 2003/04 – 2007/08 via Approval Plan Selection, Librarian Firm Order, and ILL Patron-Driven Acquisition

On numerous occasions over the course of the UNL Libraries’ continuing discussions concerning the allocation of collections monies, the UNL Libraries’ liaison librarians have made a variety of assertions, arguments, and claims concerning their patrons and their patrons’ needs. For example, the humanities librarians have repeatedly staked a claim to the humanities’ being the “book” discipline and have made a variety of assertions concerning humanities patrons and humanities books that could be treated as testable hypothesis. For example: 1) Humanities patrons use books more than do other disciplines’ patrons; 2) Humanities patrons use more books than do other disciplines’ patrons; 3) Humanities books are used more than are other disciplines’ books; 4) Humanities books’ circulation is an inadequate and/or inaccurate measure of humanities’ patrons’ need for and/or use of their books because it does not account for in-house usage, for ILL requests for returnables, or for circulation renewals (Note: this last argument has been that humanities patrons use books for deeper scholarship and for longer periods, so some portion of their potential circulations will be transformed into and lost as renewals); 5) …and so forth. It would be, of course, impossible to provide a complete and comprehensive analysis of collections usage that would address every issue and objection, but the authors hope here to address a few of the above points somewhat. Unfortunately, we cannot address the points concerning humanities patrons using books more or using more books than do the patrons of the other disciplines. Not least because of privacy concerns, the UNL Libraries simply does not track their patrons in a way that would allow for those analyses. Likely, patrons’ revealed preferences in this area could only be approached somewhat obliquely via citation analysis. For similar reasons, we cannot address the point concerning in-house usage by patron affiliation without arranging for data to be collected through direct observation and demographic interviews. The point concerning ILL borrowing of returnables might be addressable in future as the Delivery/ILL department collects a tremendous amount of data, but that data is not available for analysis at the moment. The questions that we can somewhat address here involve the books themselves: 1) Was a greater percentage of any one discipline’s books circulated over the interval? Renewed? Did it matter who selected the book? 2) Did any one discipline’s books experience more circulations? More circulations-and-renewals? 3) Which variables, in future, might be useful for predictively modelling circulation and/or circulations-and-renewals? 4) Could early relative performance predict future performance

The Past and the Future of Veterinary Education, Part One: A View of the Past

Although the practice of the veterinary art extends back to the earliest beginnings of civilization, it has only been during comparatively recent times that the education of veterinarians has been conducted along formal lines. The first veterinary school was founded at Lyons, France, in 1761. Following the example set by France, schools of veterinary medicine were soon organized in several other European countries

The Past and the Future of Veterinary Education, Part Two: A Look to the Future

That we live in an age of fantastic change is a fact which no one will dispute. Equally prominent is the fact that we must change many of our time tested programs and policies in order to survive in our constantly changing scientific environment. This advance makes different demands of different disciplines. It is our purpose to view those that it has and will place on veterinary education and to explore possible solutions that can bring us into our golden era. This age of opportunity is no longer on the horizon - it is here with us waiting and challenging us for acceptance

Wiley Journal Package: UNL Download Activity by Subject

Because the field of librarianship has been reconsidering its relationship to commercial academic publishers and their \u27Big Deal\u27 journal packages, the authors decided to review the University of Nebraska-Lincoln\u27s usage of Wiley\u27s package. In this report, the authors looked into whether UNL\u27s downloads by subject were such that subscribing to a number of hypothetical smaller, subject-specific packages, rather than to the entire Wiley package, might be a viable strategy