1. This presentation will probably involve audience discussion, which will create action items. Use PowerPoint to keep track of these action items during your presentation • In Slide Show, click on the right mouse button • Select “Meeting Minder” • Select the “Action Items” tab • Type in action items as they come up • Click OK to dismiss this box • This will automatically create an Action Item slide at the end of your presentation with your points entered. The Harmony of Peers - Mining Peer Selection Patterns to Improve Consortial Engineering Collections Orion Pozo – NCSU Libraries Orion_Pozo@ncsu.edu Engineering Libraries Division Poster Session ASEE Annual Meeting, Portland OR Monday, June 13, 2005 The Harmony of Peers

2. Summary • Triangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN) is a consortium of libraries at four North Carolina universities • TRLN shares a common book vendor, YBP Library Services • YBP provides Consortial & Peer Reports • Goal: • Use Consortium and Peer Data to Increase quality and quantity of titles available to the consortium The Harmony of Peers

3. The Triangle Research Libraries Network: • North Carolina State University • University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill • Duke University • North Carolina Central University The Harmony of Peers

4. Hong Kong Polytechnic Univ RMIT Monash University Univ of Cincinnati Iowa State Univ MIT Penn State Univ Purdue Univ Massey Univ Chinese Univ of Hong Kong Cornell Univ Stanford Univ Ohio State Univ UC San Diego Hong Kong Univ of Sci & Tech Carnegie Mellon Univ Univ of Technology, Sydney Clemson Univ Cal State Poly Univ, Pomona Rensselaer Polytech Inst Univ of Wisconsin, Madison Univ of Calgary Duke Univ Peer Institutions* * Peers were chosen based on the number of book selections in YBP’s Gobi2 database in the subjects of technology and computer science The Harmony of Peers

5. Goals --Increase quality of titles available to the consortium -Reduce duplication of titles in the consortium Methodology - • For 2004-2005 use Consortial Reports to reduce duplication • At the same time use Peer Reports to identify quality titles not in consortium • Compare the selection of duplicates and unique titles in the Consortium from 2003-2004 and 2004-2005 The Harmony of Peers

6. Project Outline:At one TRLN institution • Use Consortial Reports to reduce duplication & identify titles not held • Use Peer Reports to identify quality books not held • Compare Consortial reports with Peer reports to purchase quality items not in the consortium • Compare duplication and number of titles for 2003-2004 (before Peer Reports) and 2004-2005 (after Peer Reports) The Harmony of Peers

7. Details • Limited to: • Books ordered from one vendor • Subjects: • Computer Science (QA75-77) • Engineering & Technology (T-TX) • Only two years of data available from vendor • One library (other consortial libraries purchased as always) The Harmony of Peers

8. YBP Consortial Report Form The Harmony of Peers

9. Sample YBP Record • GobiTween shows slips were sent to 4 Consortium Libraries • PeerGroup shows 10 Peer Libraries Selected this title The Harmony of Peers

10. Peer Activity Data for Single Record Lists 10 Libraries that Selected this Book The Harmony of Peers

11. From 2003-2004 to 2004-2005 TRLN Consortium purchasing of books from this vendor in these subject areas decreased 23% Number of books purchased decreased from 5,357 to 4,122 Number of Titles Purchased The Harmony of Peers

12. Number of Libraries Selecting Titles • While the number of books went down 23%, the number of titles was down only 18% • Number of titles held by a single library in the Consortium went up 7.8% • Almost 200 more titles were purchased using this methodology than would have been bought before it was available The Harmony of Peers

13. Conclusions • Consortial Reports can be used effectively to reduce duplication in book selection within a consortium • Peer Selection Data can be effectively used to find high quality materials that are not owned by consortium members • Consortial and Peer data can be used harmoniously to build richer collections The Harmony of Peers

14. Recommendations for future studies • Improvements in YBP’s Gobi2 database to allow sorting by and exporting the number of Peers selecting items would help data mining • Cooperative use of this methodology by multiple members of a consortium should enhance desirable outcomes • Replicating this study with multiple selectors in larger consortia The Harmony of Peers