Resource selection for an interdisciplinary field: a methodology

Abstract

The Health Sciences and Human Services Library of the University of Maryland developed and implemented a methodology to evaluate print and digital resources for social work. Although this methodology was devised for the interdisciplinary field of social work, the authors believe it may lend itself to resource selection in other interdisciplinary fields. The methodology was developed in response to the results of two separate surveys conducted in late 1999, which indicated improvement was needed in the library's graduate-level social work collections. Library liaisons evaluated the print collection by identifying forty-five locally relevant Library of Congress subject headings and then using these subjects or synonymous terms to compare the library's titles to collections of peer institutions, publisher catalogs, and Amazon.com. The collection also was compared to social work association bibliographies, ISI Journal Citation Reports, and major social work citation databases. An approval plan for social work books was set up to assist in identifying newly published titles. The library acquired new print and digital social work resources as a result of the evaluation, thus improving both print and digital collections for its social work constituents. Visibility of digital resources was increased by cataloging individual titles in aggregated electronic journal packages and listing each title on the library Web page.

INTRODUCTION

The Health Sciences and Human Services Library (HS/HSL) at the University of Maryland is a large academic health sciences library in Baltimore serving six professional schools, including the School of Social Work (SSW). The SSW is the only school the HS/HSL serves whose curriculum is not strictly in the health sciences, although it does offer health-related specializations in areas such as aging and substance abuse. It enrolls more than 1,300 students and offers the only master's and doctoral programs in social work in the state of Maryland.

Social work is an interdisciplinary field that draws on subjects as diverse as sociology, psychology, medicine, management, economics, and policy studies, of which only medicine is offered as a program of study on the Baltimore campus. Social work research necessarily requires a wide range of information resources that are not normally available on health sciences campuses. In addition, a significant number of the social work students are returning to higher education to start new careers and have not had undergraduate training in social work–related fields. For this reason, many of these students need access to undergraduate resources that are not immediately available to them on the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB), campus. The other University System of Maryland (USM) campuses with relevant undergraduate collections are located outside Baltimore and not convenient for UMB students. In addition to lacking immediate access to relevant undergraduate collections, the students also have no easy access to related graduate resources, because the UMB campus offers no graduate programs in social work–related disciplines, such as sociology and psychology. The University of Maryland, College Park, the flagship campus of the USM, offers these programs and resources but is located more than thirty miles from Baltimore. Budgetary realities prevent the HS/HSL from duplicating the graduate-level collections offered at the other USM campuses.

In 1998, the SSW dissolved its Learning Resource Center, a small library located in the SSW building. The HS/HSL absorbed a portion of the center's holdings, but many in the school considered the elimination of this separate library, which had been run by a librarian who focused exclusively on the needs of the students and faculty of the SSW, to be a loss of resources. This loss eventually found voice in the fall of 1999 with the establishment of an informal SSW committee to address the perceived shortcomings of the HS/HSL. The ad hoc committee, composed of SSW faculty and students, developed and conducted a survey among the school's constituents to ascertain the levels of satisfaction with the library's services and resources. The survey results, which were less than favorable toward the library, were published in the school's Bulletin, a weekly newsletter that is distributed to SSW faculty and students [1]. The results were also presented to the school's administration, which responded by creating a formal Library Committee composed of SSW faculty and students but no librarians.

Independently, and without being aware of the SSW's survey, the HS/HSL had been conducting its own annual user survey that same October as part of National Medical Librarians Month. A few of the responses to this survey indicated that the library's collections for social work were weak. To address the concerns expressed in the HS/HSL survey, the library director formed an ad hoc committee composed of library staff in December 1999. “The need for [improved] lateral communications in a horizontal layer of an organization between people who do not share the same vertical hierarchy” [2] was exemplified by the parallel development of two committees addressing social work–related resources on the UMB campus. Once library staff became aware of the article and survey results in the SSW's Bulletin, the library director initiated a dialogue with the associate dean of the School of Social Work.

Over the course of the next year, a series of meetings was conducted, both among library staff and with SSW faculty and students, to determine what steps needed to be taken to address the concerns of those faculty members and students. The issues discussed during these meetings included the availability of relevant print and digital resources, particularly full-text journals, and, to a lesser degree, the library's interlibrary loan (ILL) and course reserve services. Library staff involved in these meetings included the director, the assistant director for resources management, the head of collection development, the two social work liaisons (reference librarians responding to the information needs of faculty, staff, and students in a particular school), and the assistant director for access services.

LITERATURE REVIEW

The liaisons searched the library literature and found that, although the literature was replete with articles and books on collection evaluation methods, no literature specifically addressed the evaluation of both print and online resources for graduate-level social work programs. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of social work, published bibliographies tended to limit themselves to one narrow aspect, such as social work with a particular population (e.g., the elderly), a specific type of social work (e.g., international social work), or a literary genre (e.g., dissertations). Mendelsohn's bibliography on social work and human services was fairly comprehensive but was deemed too outdated to be useful [3].

Those few journal articles that specifically addressed resource selection and collection evaluation for social work were also outdated and did not take into account Internet resources or databases. Of the more recent articles written about collection evaluation, nothing specific to the field of social work was found. It was interesting to note that much of the more recent evaluative work done in areas other than social work addressed electronic resources and “virtual” library collections rather than print resources.

Much of the literature on collection evaluation tended to deal with traditional, more “focused” subject areas. The fact that social work is a highly interdisciplinary field renders many of these techniques inappropriate. Chu, referring to obstacles to interdisciplinary collection development, noted, “What is central to [these faculty] is on the fringes of established areas . . . and therefore fall[s] through the cracks of present systems organized by disciplines” [4]. Dobson, Kushkowski, and Gerhard focused on the challenges of collection evaluation for interdisciplinary fields and spoke to many of the same problems that the authors encountered with social work. Their article started from the premise that “interdisciplinary fields pose particular problems for collection evaluation” [5], because “librarians must cope with materials in multiple classifications and locations, and they may find it difficult to build consensus among scattered faculty as to what comprises an adequate local collection or adequate remote access” [6]. Dobson, Kushkowski, and Gerhard astutely pointed out that evaluation methods of the future will need to rely on traditional as well as nontraditional methods, including the evaluation of ILL, cooperative collection development agreements, remote resource delivery, and bibliographic instruction in the use of electronic resources [7]. They concluded that “collection evaluation for interdisciplinary areas is more complex than for traditional disciplines, and traditional measures applied in traditional ways are inadequate” [8].

METHODOLOGY

The first step was to develop a methodology by which the social work resources in the existing HS/HSL print collection might be evaluated. A query was posted to COLLDV-L, the collection development email discussion list, to solicit suggestions on how to approach such an evaluation project. Responses to that query confirmed that no single current bibliography for graduate social work existed against which HS/HSL holdings might be compared. In the absence of a standard such as the Brandon/Hill lists, the liaisons developed a list of forty-five Library of Congress (LC) subject headings considered representative of the subject needs of the social work program on campus. They then searched the online catalogs of those universities identified by the deans of the SSW as peer institutions. Two of these universities had separate social work libraries, apart from the main libraries on their campuses. Both had posted “new acquisitions” lists on their Web pages, against which the liaisons checked HS/HSL holdings. The liaisons also searched Amazon.com, using terms synonymous with the previously identified LC subject headings, and reviewed relevant publisher catalogs to identify appropriate titles.

The liaisons restricted their searches to seminal social work titles and those titles published in the past three years. Using her personal knowledge of the field, the liaison who had been a social worker prior to becoming a librarian identified the seminal titles. Imprints older than three years were excluded as they were unlikely to be in print. Books identified using this methodology were added to a list to be considered for potential purchase. Funds for the purchase of these new social work books were limited to the existing library collections budget; no funds were forthcoming from the SSW to acquire new resources.

The liaisons also reviewed extensive bibliographies in study guides compiled by the American Association of State Social Work Boards (AASSWB) to determine how many of those titles the HS/HSL lacked. Ninety-two percent of those titles referenced in the advanced clinical study guides were already in the collection (Table 1). In some cases, the edition held by the HS/HSL was more recent than those identified on the AASSWB lists.

Table 1 American Association of State Social Work Boards (AASSWB) study guides (1999)

In addition to comparing journal holdings against those of peer institutions, the liaisons also compared them against the ISI Social Sciences Citation Index: Journal Citation Reports (JCR) and the list of journals indexed in Social Work Abstracts (SWAB). Four categories of the JCR impact factors were identified as being relevant to social work: geriatrics and gerontology, social issues, social work, and substance abuse. A review of the top ten journals in each of these categories revealed that the HS/HSL journal collection was strong in three of the four categories, but that holdings in the social issues category needed much improvement (Table 2). Of those journals abstracted and indexed in SWAB, HS/HSL subscribed to only 54% (73 out of 136) of all journals listed on the 1998 cumulative list of journals but subscribed to 70% (27 out of 39) of the journals listed as “core” social work journals. SWAB defined “core journal” as one in which all articles were abstracted and indexed; the non-core journals had only selected articles abstracted or indexed or are indexed inconsistently from year to year (Table 3).

Table 2 Journal Citation Reports (JCR) Social Sciences (1998 edition): impact factor

Table 3 Social Work Abstracts (SWAB): journals abstracted and indexed (1998)

Relevant journals that were identified by the liaisons during the SWAB and JCR reviews were added to a list to be considered by the Journal Review Committee in the summer of 2000. The Journal Review Committee is a standing committee composed of librarians who evaluate all requests for new subscriptions received over the course of a year and who recommend purchases and cancellations based on available funds and other criteria. The library director also solicited journal recommendations from the SSW associate dean, who responded by submitting a list of journals gathered from social work faculty.

While the liaisons were comparing HS/HSL holdings against those of the SSW-identified peer institutions, the head of collection development recognized that a better method of identifying newly published social work books was needed. The library's existing health sciences approval plan did not cover many of the publishers whose primary subject matter was social work or related fields. As a result, the library decided to set up a separate approval plan, specifically for social work, with a general academic book vendor. A request for proposal was developed, a vendor selected, and an approval plan profile created for social work–related books. The approval plan parameters were sent to the SSW for review and comment, and the new plan was implemented in September 2000.

In addition to evaluating the print collection, the library liaisons also evaluated social work–related digital resources. The HS/HSL already subscribed to the online versions of Social Work Abstracts (SWAB), Psychological Abstracts (PsycINFO), and Health and Psychosocial Instruments (HaPI). The liaisons reviewed and evaluated a list of databases and resources that had been suggested by SSW faculty as well as several resources they themselves had identified. Much work went into comparing journal titles indexed in narrow, specialized abstracting or indexing services, such as The Left Index and Violence and Abuse Abstracts, against journals indexed in the major social work citation databases—SWAB, Sociological Abstracts, and PsycINFO. Ultimately, all the specialized indexes were eliminated from consideration, because either the journals were indexed already in SWAB, PsycINFO, or Sociological Abstracts or the titles they indexed were newsletters or other minor publications excluded by the library's collection development policy.

Although the HS/HSL subscribed to Sociological Abstracts in print, it did not have the online version. Because most patrons no longer use print indexes, the online version of Sociological Abstracts was evaluated as a replacement for the print version. The liaisons determined that almost all the titles indexed in SWAB were also indexed in PsycINFO or Sociological Abstracts; therefore, the HS/HSL recommended to the SSW that the SWAB subscription be cancelled to save money, which could then be used to purchase other resources. Despite the significant overlap among these databases, the SSW administration requested that the SWAB subscription be maintained.

To provide better access to the library's existing online resources relevant to social work, the liaisons reviewed a list of full-text journals available to HS/HSL via EBSCO's aggregated electronic journal package, Academic Search Elite. The relevant titles were then listed individually on the HS/HSL Web page within an alphabetical list of all the library's e-journals and were cataloged individually in the online catalog to increase their visibility. Availability of these online titles was promoted in library instructional classes and in the SSW newsletter.

As a member of the University System of Maryland, the HS/HSL sometimes purchases digital resources consortially. Several digital resources to which other campuses in the consortium subscribed were identified for their relevance to social work and subsequently evaluated. During this same time, the Maryland Digital Library (MDL) came into being. Funded by the State of Maryland, the MDL is a project that provides faculty, staff, and students at fifty-six participating public and independent colleges and universities in Maryland with access to electronic books and journals via a Web-based gateway. As a participant in MDL, the library has benefited from access to additional resources relevant to social work, including Project Muse, NetLibrary, and EBSCO's Business Source Premier.

As a separate initiative during this period, the HS/HSL was obtaining access to as many free-with-print e-journals as possible. The library began subscriptions directly with publishers as well as with SwetsnetNavigator, an e-journal aggregator service, to supplement the library's existing full-text e-journals obtained through OVID and the American Chemical Society. The library also created a full-time digital resources librarian position in the fall of 2000, which enabled the library to pursue the acquisition of many more free-with-print e-journals.

RESULTS

Library staff have acknowledged that they should do a better job of providing resources for the SSW. Likewise, the SSW have acknowledged that communication with the library could be improved by upgrading its ad hoc Library Committee into a standing committee with library representatives included in the membership. Both the HS/HSL and SSW hope this new standing committee will “orchestrate a more uniform manner of communication between the SSW and the HS/HSL” [9]. Library staff, in particular the liaisons, continue to meet with social work faculty and students via the SSW Library Committee as well as with individual faculty with specialized interests to address any library-related concerns they may have.

Liaisons continue to compile and email “new acquisitions” lists each month to SSW faculty, a practice they began in November 1999. They also continue to write articles about new library resources and services for the SSW Bulletin and distribute lists of print and electronic resources to students attending library research classes. In the spring of 2001, the liaisons increased their efforts to make social work faculty and students aware of new library books by mounting a display of dust jackets at the entrance of the SSW. This decidedly low-tech effort seems to have been very successful, judging by the number of “tear-off” call number slips that have been taken from the display.

As a result of the extensive book collection evaluation and the filling of a vacant SSW liaison position, the HS/HSL more than doubled the number of social work books acquired in fiscal year (FY) 2000/01, compared to FY 1999/2000 (372 in July–March 2000/01, compared to 151 in July–March 1999/2000). At the same time, the number of course reserve books acquired for SSW decreased (about 80 in July–March 2000/01, compared to about 120 in July–March 1999/2000) despite an increase in the number of SSW book requests processed for reserve (2,019 for fall–spring 2000/01, compared to 1,433 for fall–spring 1999/2000). One possible explanation for this apparent contradiction was that the increased collection development efforts by the social work liaisons, as previously described, enabled the library to acquire new social work books prior to faculty requesting the books for course reserves. Efforts at improving communication also addressed the processing of journal articles for course reserves, identified as problematic by the SSW due to copyright restrictions and by the HS/HSL due to late submissions of requests. The copyright permission process was improved by increased use of the Copyright Clearance Center to obtain these articles. In turn, SSW faculty responded with more timely submissions of course syllabi to the course reserves unit for the spring 2001 term, almost doubling the number from the previous year (53 in January 2001, compared to 28 in January 2000).

As a result of the extensive comparison of the HS/HSL journal collection with those of the SSW-identified peers and after reviewing a list of journal requests submitted by the SSW, the HS/HSL subscribed to eleven new print journals in 2001. The number of journal requests received in 2001 decreased from the previous year (6 requests in 2001, compared to 14 in 2000). The library hopes that this decrease means more of the school's journal needs are being met.

To expand the digital resources available for social work, the library subscribed to Sociological Abstracts online. Also, through the USM consortium, the HS/HSL acquired Ageline, a database containing citations and abstracts to aging-related publications. The implementation of SwetsnetNavigator in February 2001 provided access to over 100 full-text journals relevant to social work. Overall, the number of full-text journals to which the library subscribes has increased from 134 in 1999 to nearly 1,000 as of summer 2001. As with the increased number of books acquired for social work during this project, the cost of the new journals and digital resources was covered by existing HS/HSL funds, with no funding from the SSW.

Highlighting the individual journal titles in aggregator packages, by listing them separately on the Web page and cataloging them in the online catalog, has increased the visibility of those full-text journals. Prior to emphasizing the individual journals, titles such as Journal of Black Psychology, Journal of Applied Gerontology, and Violence Against Women were buried in e-journal packages, and users often did not know they were available.

While the liaisons and head of collection development focused on improving collections and services to SSW, a Web team completely redesigned the library Website. The new and improved Web page design, unveiled in May 2000, not only better presents the available electronic resources, but also offers other improved services, such as electronic forms to make ILL requests or to recommend books, journals, or digital resources. Supplementing the library's printed newsletter, the Web page offers announcements of new library services and resources and has orientation pages for each school. The SSW orientation page contains library liaison contact information, general library information, social work database instructions and links, and a list of social work Internet resources. The library has formed a Web advisory committee to continue to evaluate and improve the content and usability of the Website.

The reliance on electronic resources by social work faculty and students has increased as that school expands its programs to several off-campus sites. The SSW offers its students the opportunity to satisfy the core course requirements at these satellite locations. Access to the HS/HSL electronic resources has made it much easier for these students, many of whom are employed full time, to do their research and readings from home. A significant number of the social work students are older students returning to school after having been in the workforce for a period of time. Many are not familiar with using online databases, which are now the norm in highly automated library environments. To address this challenge, classes on how to use electronic resources are offered at these remote sites. In addition, to assist these students with assigned readings in print format, the HS/HSL instituted a new system during FY 2000/01 to expedite the delivery of materials to these remote sites. The library developed a separate Web form for book requests originating at these locations and guaranteed delivery within four days via United Parcel Service. In practice, most books are delivered in two days rather than four.

Among the criticisms from discussions with the SSW's Library Committee was a perceived delay in filling ILL requests and a consequent reluctance to use ILL to obtain material. During FY 2000/01, a separate initiative to improve the library's ILL service resulted in decreased turn-around times for materials borrowed via OCLC, from an average of 7.8 days in FY 1999/2000 to 6.6 days in FY 2000/01. The overall borrowing fill-rate also improved on average by 6.5% during that same period, despite a 9% increase in ILL borrowing requests since January 2001, when the HS/HSL introduced “online-only” ILL requests.

Currently, the library's ability to gather meaningful statistics to measure the effectiveness of its efforts is limited. Plans to monitor statistics of print and online journal usage and ILL transactions, as indicators of effectiveness in making more resources available to SSW constituents, have been slow to develop. The statistics gathered for print journal use are estimates at best. A May 2001 modification to the inhouse ILL borrowing form enables the library to track the affiliations of its borrowers as another means of gauging the adequacy of its collections. In September 2001, the HS/HSL formed two task forces to begin addressing the library's methods of compiling use data, one for print and one for online resources.

The HS/HSL plans to migrate to a new Web-based catalog with the rest of the USM libraries in 2002. The selected system, Ex Libris Aleph 500, has a feature called SFX that, though still in development, will allow users to link between citations in the Web catalog to full-text journal articles in other databases. This migration is expected to improve services in several ways. It should facilitate users' ability to find what they need by searching one catalog shared by all sixteen libraries in the university system. Once a book or journal is identified, users will be able to initiate patron-placed holds and have the item delivered to their home libraries instead of traveling to another library or requesting it via ILL. Another benefit of a Web catalog will be that many library users, who are already familiar and comfortable with searching the Internet, should find it easier to use than the current text-based catalog. Clicking on a uniform resource locator (URL) will enable direct access in the catalog without having to find the resource on the Web page and linking to it from there.

CONCLUSIONS

Although the social work faculty have been encouraged by the library liaisons, the social work deans, and the chair of the social work library committee to participate in collection development efforts, faculty requests for books, journals, and electronic resources have neither increased nor decreased significantly. HS/HSL librarians must continue to make faculty aware of the role faculty can and should play in developing resources that adequately support the programs of their schools. An inherent difficulty remains in that SSW master's and doctoral students are permitted to define areas of research beyond the SSW's specializations, and ILL, document delivery, and physically visiting other libraries will continue to be the primary way for those students to obtain needed resources. With the enhancement of electronic resources and the improvement in ILL fill rate and turn-around time, library staff hope that more students and faculty will make use of these services. The migration to a consortial online catalog with a patron-placed hold function should make the other USM campuses' collections more accessible, as USM maintains an efficient library-to-library document delivery service that may satisfy users more than traditional ILL has in the past.

Effective, reciprocal communication must be maintained, and the library must continue to make faculty and students aware of its resources and the mechanisms by which to obtain them. Evaluating resources that support an interdisciplinary program such as social work, which relies both on broad and narrow resources from many related fields, is an intensive and dynamic process that requires employing several methodologies in the absence of standard bibliographies. The methodology described in this article may lend itself to resource selection and collection evaluation in other interdisciplinary fields. The HS/HSL plans to review its resources periodically using this methodology to ensure that it is providing as many resources as possible to its users.