SJSU Research Guides: Resources for SJSU Librarians: Collection Development

Collection Development

Liaison librarians are responsible for selecting, acquiring, managing, and delivering licensed, free, and researcher-generated data collections to support campus research and scholarship.

As of March 2020, the library is purchasing ebooks only. The Associate Dean of Research and Scholarship will announce when this policy changes.

The general workflow for developing collections is as such:

Librarian uses domain knowledge ("Collection enhancement") or a request from liaison faculty ("Faculty request") to select books and ebooks.
Librarian checks our ordering platform, Rialto, for accessibility and price, and to submit requests. Please refer to the Ordering tab for specific steps.
Tech Services receives request and evaluates for duplication and accessibility. If there are questions, Tech Services will notify the librarian.
If an individual item costs more than $500, Tech Services forwards the selection to the Associate Dean of Research and Scholarship for approval.
Tech Services informs you when the item has arrived. The librarian should verify the permalink and then share with interested parties.

The tabs on this guide will walk you through each step of the process.

What's Your Coverage Area?
Use the document "Liaisons by Call Number" to see your assigned coverage areas.

Librarians enhance their collections based on their own knowledge and experience. It takes place at designated times, when the Dean of Research and Scholarship or the Faculty Directors make an announcement, usually with a time frame, such as "We are open to collection enhancement at this time; please place orders no later than May 1st." You will use Rialto to place your collection enhancement requests.

For collection enhancement, you may wish to use some of the following resources, as well as journals, reviews, and materials you find on your own:

Choice Reviews This link opens in a new window
Short, critical evaluations of new current scholarly books and electronic media of interest to people in higher education and library science. New reviews are arranged by academic discipline and broad interdisciplinary topic.
Book Review Digest Plus This link opens in a new window
With coverage back to 1983, Book Review Digest Plus indexes reviews of current fiction and non-fiction, and provides review excerpts and over 100,000 full text reviews. Includes children’s books as well as books for adults and young adults. 4 simultaneous users
Gale Literature Book Review Index This link opens in a new window
The benchmark reference for reviews of every kind, the original print edition of Book Review Index provides quick access to reviews of books, periodicals, books on tape and electronic media representing a wide range of popular, academic and professional interests. Includes more than 5.6 million book reviews, allowing users to conduct research in numerous disciplines, including literature, history, education, psychology, and more.

Occasionally, your faculty will contact you requesting access to specific materials. In turn, you can review their request, ascertaining that we don't already have access to the materials. If the material is not a duplicate, you can select the item in our ordering platform, Rialto, and submit the request. A general workflow for Faculty Requests;

Faculty asks librarian for specific item, usually by email.
Librarian checks to see if we already have the item in OneSearch. If so, share the permalink with the faculty.
If we don't have the item, check our ordering platform, Rialto. Is the item available in the. U.S.? If it's an ebook, are there restrictions to how many users may access? Is the item under $500?
Submit the order within the ordering system. Since most faculty requests are considered rushes, email Technical Services to indicate the rush.
Technical Services or Electronic Resources will email you when the item is available. Verify link and share with the faculty.

When you place an order for books or ebooks, you will want to use Rialto, which is our current vendor.

Please use the following resources, which contain directions ad screenshots, to place orders.

Rialto for Librarians
Use this documentation to place orders in Rialto.
Fund Codes
Each of your coverage area bills to a specific fund code. To access the fund codes, which you need to enter in Rialto, please refer to this document.

Journal Subscription Request
Occasionally, you'll be asked to select a journal. Use this form as a guide.

Reading List by Leganto is a tool used to create reading lists and integrate your list in Canvas courses. Librarians and instructors can add electronic articles, streaming media, digitized content, physical materials, and more into a single list so students can access all their course materials in one place.

Leganto

We have multiple tools and resources to help you analyze your collection. In general, you do not need to analyze your collection unless a special project is assigned.

InterLibrary Loan Reports
SJSU users place their own ILL requests using the ILL tab on our homepage. To review what users have been requesting in your collection areas, contact:
Danny Soares, Head of Document Delivery Services, danny.soares@sjsu.edu or
the ILS team at library-ils-group@sjsu.edu.
Specify date ranges in your request.
Alma Analytics Training
We use Alma Analytics to generate reports on library usage. You can gather very specific information on your collection but the interface can be challenging. This document walks you through some of the most common Analytics reports for liaisons. Contact Tech Services for more information.
Alma Analytics Request
Alma Analytics can be challenging to learn; you may wish to ask Tech Services to generate a report for you. Instructions for how to do that are in this document.
More Analytical Tools
Tech Services has put together a directory of useful training documents, screen shots, and forms for analyzing your collection

Collection Development @ SJSU Library
SJSU Librarians regularly assess the Library’s collections for quality, accessibility, and relevance. Quantitative and qualitative methods to evaluate the collection include benchmarking, list-checking, usage statistics, and citation analysis. Periodic evaluation of the print collection is conducted to determine whether the collection is supporting curricular changes and developing research by faculty and students. Withdrawal of titles is subject to procedures outlined in the Academic Senate Library Policy S15-10 sec. 7.2.

Alma

Alma, which is owned by Ex Libris, is a unified library services platform. It is the backend of OneSearch.

Alma Analytics

Alma Analytics is a tool used for analyzing your collection. SJSU staff has created templates for common reports. Please see the Ordering tab for specific instructions.

Leganto

Leganto is a software program that offers Reading Lists. It integrates with Canvas so that faculty instructors can create reading lists in their courses with links to electronic sources in the library.

OneSearch

OneSearch is the library's forward-facing online catalog, or discovery service.

Rialto

Rialto is an ordering interface that is integrated with Alma. See the Ordering tab for instruction on how to use.

Tech Services

Tech Services refers to the library team which manages orders. When contacting Tech Services, you may wish to email both Bernadette Humphrey, Head of Resources & Analytics, bernadette.humphrey@sjsu.edu, and Elena Seto, Acquistions/Contracts Analyst, elena.seto@sjsu.edu.

IRC and DVD/VHS Holdings

BACKSTORY

The IRC had about 3,500 DVD and VHS titles available for loan. In summer 2023, prompted by space issues in their building, the IRC team boxed up all of this inventory and moved it to the library. The majority of the content is still in Tech Services as Jill Strykowski is going through it to determine usability (i.e. physical condition), alternate availability, and duplication by title. All of these items are inventoried in Alma, but currently most are suppressed from OneSearch because they are not publicly accessible, being in TechServices.

COURSE RESERVES

We pulled out all the DVD's and VHS's with recent loan history from IRC and made them accessible in the Course Reserves area. This subset is discoverable in OneSeach. They all have call numbers starting with letter X (view in OneSearch).

HOW TO HELP TEACHERS

If you get a request from a professor looking for a DVD or VHS they historically showed in class and now cannot find through IRC or need to make available asynchronously, please work with them to

Check if the video is in library Course Reserves already
Email Elena Seto and Jill Strykowski - Elena and the Acquisitions team can check on streaming options - Jill can check if the title is in one of the IRC boxes she still has down in the Lower Level.
If there is no streaming option for the title, I recommend: a) request a physical copy be ordered and placed in Course Reserves ; or b) check if SJPL has the DVD (they have a large circulating, video collection)

ADDED NOTES

We are not planning to have any video materials available in the open stacks. Any videos for physical circulation through SJSU will be in Course Reserves in future.

Please reach out to Jill at any time if you have questions about how she is processing the IRC resources. Any questions about purchasing of additional video content should be directed to the Collection Development Team at collection-development@sjsu.edu