Library Collection Assessments

Assessments of the collections for Academic Program Reviews, new academic program proposals, and program accreditations are conducted by the Collection Development Librarian. Any academic department needing such an assessment should contact the Collection Development Librarian directly (colldev@txstate.edu), to ensure that the information and statistics are complete, current, and adequate for each type of assessment requested.

All assessment documents are supplied to the department electronically. 

Academic Program Reviews

The library compiles data for the 5-year cyclical Academic Program Reviews conducted by the Office of Institutional Effectiveness:

  1. Amount of money allocated on an annual basis for monographs in the academic discipline of the program under review.
  2. Number of journals and other continuing resources accessible for the discipline.
  3. Summarized holdings in identified call number areas. This includes current serial holdings and a summary of all material holdings separated by major significant call number groupings (such as PR or PS, or by LC number ranges, P1-999) relevant to the academic discipline.
  4. Circulation figures for each monograph title in the compiled holdings list.  
  5. Current continuing resources (journals serials) paid by the library to support the academic discipline/s associated with the program under review.  This may include individual continuing resources annual cost, cost-per-use and/or circulation figures if available.
  6. List of indexes and databases supporting research relevant to the academic discipline/s of the program under review.

Program reviews for all academic departments are the responsibility of the Office of Institutional Effectiveness, a Division of Academic Affairs. Even though the Collection Development Librarian compiles the data, academic departments undergoing their ACR must contact the Office of Institutional Effectiveness  for this information.   
 

New Programs

The following data is typically provided:

  1. Total amount of library material money allocated to relevant academic disciplines over last 5 years.
  2. Amount of money allocated to the continuing resources group to which the discipline belongs. 
  3. Number of titles in identified call number areas relevant to a particular academic discipline or program. This includes current and non-current serial holdings in the total titles.
  4. What was purchased by the library for the relevant academic discipline/s over the past 5 years. This will include serial subscriptions or non-consecutively purchased serial titles.
  5. Current serial/journal titles paid by the library to support the relevant academic disciplines (if requested).
  6. List of indexes and databases currently owned that support research in the new proposed program’s disciplines.

Accreditations

The library will follow the accrediting body's report requirements. Please send the accrediting agency documents to Collection Development with sufficient time to gather all the information and documentation. Some reports require several days to generate, so contact us as soon as possible.

Optional Reports for New PhD or substantive new program proposals

Collection Development can produce reports using OCLC’s WorldShare Collection Evaluation. This application can list all material holdings (monographs, annuals and media) in a specific subject discipline at Texas State University Library.  It can compare our holdings to those of other institutions. It can also be limited to holdings within a certain time period (year or range of years). This comparative report requires time, so it should be discussed as soon as possible, before the section about the library in a new program proposal is written.

Limitations Comparing Journals, Databases and Ebooks

The OCLC WorldShare Collection Evaluation tool is most often used to compare books and media. A serial/journals report can be produced through OCLC if the identified comparable institutions catalog these resources using Library of Congress call numbers.  This is true of eBook holdings as well.  Not all institutions catalog these kinds of formats or include those holdings in their OCLC holdings reports.  The OCLC collection evaluation tool cannot distinguish between active (currently subscribed to) and inactive (no longer subscribed to) serial/journals.  For new PhD program proposals and substantive new program proposal, we will do a manual comparison of relevant databases. 

Journal Citation Reports

We can identify how individual journal titles selected by the sponsoring Texas State academic department, currently subscribed to, or proposed, rank by impact factor in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) database.  JCR ranks journal titles by how often they are cited in academic/research articles. The impact factor provides a systematic, objective way to determine the relative importance of journals to research within their subject category.