Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington
Advance research through ongoing collection assessment
"GreenGlass is key to what we are trying to achieve because it helps us to more easily apply quantitative techniques, such as statistical and cost-benefit analysis, to the process of planning, building, and maintaining the library’s information resources."
Margaret Ferguson
Collection Policy and Development Manager, Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington Library
The library at Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington supports students and researchers who produce thousands of publications each year. To keep up with the needs of modern researchers, the library’s staff conduct ongoing evaluations of their collections, which include more than a million printed volumes. “We assess collections regularly to ensure appropriate location, availability, relevance, currency, usage, and conservation and preservation needs,” explained Margaret Ferguson, Collection Policy and Development Manager. “Thanks to GreenGlass, we have been able to do this much faster than has been previously possible.”
GreenGlass combines local circulation and item data with WorldCat holdings, HathiTrust Digital Library holdings, and authoritative title lists to help libraries understand the value of their resources. Since 2019, the library staff has used GreenGlass to analyze their collections and make informed and transparent decisions about what titles to deselect and what subject areas need additional resources. “We give books a score and use a formula to make deselection decisions,” Margaret said. “GreenGlass makes us question why we have certain books, and it illustrates gaps where we have only one or two books in a classification.”
"The good thing about GreenGlass is that we can justify every decision we have made using all the data and information supporting the outcome in one place."
Margaret’s team works through the library’s extensive print collection by evaluating 250 titles at a time with GreenGlass data and their own internal evaluation criteria. With those manageable quantities, they plan to analyze 600,000 titles from the onsite collection and 500,000 from the offsite collection. “Without GreenGlass, we would have lost a lot of time producing reports. Using the system makes it easy to do large-scale collection analysis projects of this kind in a cost-efficient and user-relevant manner,” she said.
The staff also uses GreenGlass data to see if a title is available via HathiTrust, electronically, or from other libraries through interlibrary loan. “Some of the data insights have been really eye opening,” Margaret said. “GreenGlass has helped us identify areas where the collection is particularly strong and areas for future collection development.
“We have learned so much about our collections,” she added, including collection strengths that the staff wasn’t aware of. “Overall, I like the fact that the data in GreenGlass is trusted. We trust the data now to make decisions about our collections.”
Services used by Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington
OCLC Cataloging and Metadata Subscription
Location
- Wellington, New Zealand
- Dedicates 95% of its collections budget to electronic resources, providing access to 200,000 e-books and 70,000 periodical titles
- Supports more than 17,000 students and 2,300 staff members across three campuses with three distinct libraries, including a law library and an architecture and design library
- Provides extensive research support services, which help faculty publish more than 2,000 works each year
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