Find more time and more resources to help users

Although Sacred Heart University continues to expand its educational programs, the library faces limited physical space and a stagnant budget. Many of the school’s new graduate programs are online, which the library supports through electronic collections. Discovery and Metadata Services Librarian Dan Fitzroy explained that the library wanted to provide demand-driven acquisition (DDA) collections, knowing that these titles would get used most often. However, “These are e-books, and we were managing them manually to get the records into the catalog,” he said. Even with a small nursing collection, he explained, “it could be up to a dozen updates per week, and managing it was very time consuming.”

When the library subscribed to a large JSTOR DDA collection, Dan looked to WorldShare^® Collection Manager to help him handle the workload. The automatic, institution-specific holdings feeds available through Collection Manager relieved him from making constant manual updates. “It wasn’t hard to set up,” he said. “We just worked with JSTOR and told them this is what we're doing. They set it up, and ever since then, it's been seamless.” Initially, Dan reviewed each of the record updates before adding to his catalog. “Giving up control was a little odd feeling for some of my colleagues,” he said. But even checking records on a collection with 35,000 titles, he spent only about an hour per month on updates.

Eventually, Dan and his team grew more comfortable with the quality of the records in the automated holdings feed. “It seemed perfect. It was always right, so I was like, ‘Why are we doing this?’” he said. “Once I let it work automatically, it's literally no extra time spent on managing that really large JSTOR DDA collection.” Now, his team has confidence that they can manage large collections with automatic updates, and they’re able to choose resources based on what students and faculty want, not what the library staff can support. “We do see the JSTOR collection getting used during the semesters quite extensively. We love this particular DDA because it goes across most of our subjects,” he said. “It’s nice that it’s up to date and right.”

Dan continued, “Now that these automatic holdings feeds are streamlined and working wonderfully for me, it really did free up my time to pursue other interests where I could help out, and it led to a title change for me.” Formerly the Metadata and Resource Management Librarian, he now focuses on all-encompassing discovery issues. “This was really helpful in two ways,” he added. “One was that it allowed me to grow professionally and learn new skills. The other is that I am focusing on a service area that had been kind of neglected and am therefore able to help improve our service and access to materials.” Thanks to WorldShare Collection Manager and Dan’s dedication to improving library services, Sacred Heart’s expanding student body and faculty can find and access more of the resources they need than ever before.

Location

• Fairfield, Connecticut, United States

Library at a glance

• Supports nearly 9,000 students at one of the fastest-growing Catholic colleges in the US
• Reported 10,533 e-book full-text retrievals, 174,384 journal full-text retrievals, and 554,814 database searches during the fall 2018 semester
• Poses questions on a white board near the entrance to engage library visitors and collect informal feedback