Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

How librarians make decisions: the interplay of subjective and quantitative factors in the cancellation of Big Deals

How librarians make decisions: the interplay of subjective and quantitative factors in the... The purpose of this study is to investigate the decision-making process of librarians at the University of Western Ontario who attempted to cancel the Wiley Big Deal. The aim of the study is to reveal the underlying factors that affected their decision-making process. By understanding the decision-making process of librarians, it may be possible to devise a system that takes into consideration not only quantitative factors but also the subjective or qualitative factors that impact librarians’ decisions and thus make it easier to cancel these Big Deals.Design/methodology/approachThe study involved administering an online survey to 25 librarians involved in the cancellation project. Follow-up interviews were conducted with 13 of these librarians to understand at a deeper and more nuanced level the factors that influenced their decisions.FindingsThe main finding was that the librarians who participated in the study could be divided into two groups – a data-driven criteria group and a subjective criteria group – based on their ranking of the factors used to make their cancellation decisions. Most librarians interviewed used a mixture of quantitative factors and qualitative factors when making their cancellation decisions. The authors found that those participants who had greater professional experience and a closer relationship with the faculties in their subject areas had more difficulty in cancelling journals. Very few librarians relied on quantitative data alone.Originality/valueThis study is one of few that have examined the subjective factors that influence librarians’ decisions regarding cancellation of Big Deals. It has implications regarding the movement towards centralized collection management and reliance on quantitative data alone when making collection decisions. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Collection and Curation Emerald Publishing

How librarians make decisions: the interplay of subjective and quantitative factors in the cancellation of Big Deals

Loading next page...
 
/lp/emerald-publishing/how-librarians-make-decisions-the-interplay-of-subjective-and-vwOO330JHg

References (14)

Publisher
Emerald Publishing
Copyright
© Emerald Publishing Limited
ISSN
2514-9326
DOI
10.1108/cc-05-2018-0013
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the decision-making process of librarians at the University of Western Ontario who attempted to cancel the Wiley Big Deal. The aim of the study is to reveal the underlying factors that affected their decision-making process. By understanding the decision-making process of librarians, it may be possible to devise a system that takes into consideration not only quantitative factors but also the subjective or qualitative factors that impact librarians’ decisions and thus make it easier to cancel these Big Deals.Design/methodology/approachThe study involved administering an online survey to 25 librarians involved in the cancellation project. Follow-up interviews were conducted with 13 of these librarians to understand at a deeper and more nuanced level the factors that influenced their decisions.FindingsThe main finding was that the librarians who participated in the study could be divided into two groups – a data-driven criteria group and a subjective criteria group – based on their ranking of the factors used to make their cancellation decisions. Most librarians interviewed used a mixture of quantitative factors and qualitative factors when making their cancellation decisions. The authors found that those participants who had greater professional experience and a closer relationship with the faculties in their subject areas had more difficulty in cancelling journals. Very few librarians relied on quantitative data alone.Originality/valueThis study is one of few that have examined the subjective factors that influence librarians’ decisions regarding cancellation of Big Deals. It has implications regarding the movement towards centralized collection management and reliance on quantitative data alone when making collection decisions.

Journal

Collection and CurationEmerald Publishing

Published: Oct 4, 2018

Keywords: Academic libraries; Qualitative data; Big Deal; Centralized collection management; Journal cancellation; Quantitative data

There are no references for this article.