Developing a reusable methodology to conduct a review of library resources

Abstract

In the academic year 2017–18 The Open University Library was asked to examine its collection and content acquisition policies as part of an institution-wide review of services to students and staff. For the part of the project looking at best value of the Library content service, we wanted to review the ‘higher-cost’ content held by the Library, which was in the main the larger journal packages. From the project, we developed a methodology for conducting reviews of our Library resources in much greater depth than we did previously. As part of this process, we also carried out an in-depth overlap analysis for resources that contain full text content. The reason for the development of this methodology was to identify just how much ‘redundancy’ there was in the Library collections, as well as identifying unique selling points of certain collections. Also, by examining the subject coverage of the content we reviewed, we were able to show how well our content aligned with the teaching of the University outlined in the 2018 curriculum plan. The approach we took to this project offers a fresh perspective on how such review tasks can be undertaken in libraries. The methodologies developed could provide a useful tool to others wishing to carry out a similar review.