This study represents an assessment of the Nursing Collection at the Learning Center at Naugatuck Valley Community College, Waterbury, Connecticut. It describes the degree to which the collection adequately supports the nursing curriculum. The list-checking method was combined with syllabus analysis of nursing coursework. Two hundred and fourteen titles in the Library of Congress RT classification constitute the Nursing Collection, and 183 titles were checked against the “Brandon/Hill Selected List of Print Nursing Books and Journals.” The assessment indicated that 42% of the collection matched the titles on the List. All nursing course syllabi were analyzed by subject, and those subjects were matched against the Nursing Collection. Approximately 30% of the subjects outlined were not represented in the collection. Also, the collection’s age was evaluated. The analysis supports recommendations that include filling the subject-area gaps in the collection and using the standard list as a tool for selecting titles. It is also recommended that outdated texts and information resources be deaccessioned and, where possible, replaced with more current materials.
Evaluation of a collection is a process that a library undertakes to determine the adequacy of its collection in serving its readers. There is considerable literature on collection evaluation that suggests and elaborates upon various approaches for such assessments. “Collection assessment involves gathering both qualitative and quantitative data, analyzing and integrating them, and using the results to determine the adequacy and quality of the library holding” (Intner & Futas, 1996).
In any school library, materials collected should appropriately meet the needs and goals of the institutional curricula. In an evaluation of an academic library, methodology should be carefully constructed and rigorous. The use of only one method or approach may not provide substantial or adequate evidence for the library to determine the current status of its collection with confidence. It is vital to the success of the analysis that an appropriate method be chosen to pick out information relevant to the goals of the assessment.
An evaluation of the Nursing Collection at the Learning Resource Center (LRC) of the Naugatuck Valley Community College (NVCC) was suggested to its director, and was determined acceptable. NVCC offers two-year vocational/technical training, as well as undergraduate preparation for moving on to a four-year college or university. NVCC awards an Associate Degree in Nursing (ADN) that provides students with the necessary knowledge and skill for licensure as a Registered Nurse. Typically, the coursework for earning an ADN is not as intensive as that required of students in a Bachelor Science in Nursing (BSN) program. Therefore, the core of the Nursing Collection in the LRC may not need necessarily to be as extensive as the nursing materials in the collections of four-year colleges and universities that award a BSN.
It is important to point out that staffing limitations, a common feature of many community colleges, usually do not allow for resource and subject specialists who are trained to evaluate collections for individual departments. Often, it becomes a joint effort between department heads, educators, and library staff. This approach has varying degrees of success, and can be hampered by limitations of time, resources, and expertise. It is clear however that the ever-changing methods of classification have made the role of the Library Specialist an invaluable member of any assessment team. Since NVCC does not enjoy this luxury, expectations for the Nursing Collection were not high at the start of the analysis.
Once the initial assessment has been planned, it is necessary to define the nature of the materials to be evaluated. This assessment looked at the Nursing Collection’s monographic titles in the RT classification; serials, journals, and reference works are excluded from this assessment.
This study uses a combination of several methods in evaluating the Nursing Collection. List-checking, a quantitative analytical method, is perhaps the most widely used method when evaluating a library collection, and provides a measure of its strengths and weaknesses. List-checking can be used to evaluate the entire collection or a specific subject area. It does, however, present both advantages and disadvantages to the analyst. Comer (1981) recognized that one advantage of list-checking was that it allowed a library to check on the thoroughness of coverage in certain areas, and the identification not only of what is absent, but what is available. In doing so, both collection gaps and strengths can be identified. Conversely, the method doesn’t fully assess the adequacy of the collection in meeting the existing needs of the university’s curriculum and program (Comer, 1981). In light of this, it is clear that using only the list-checking method may not generate a satisfying result. Syllabus analysis, formally called evaluation of the “curriculum-collection relationship,” is a qualitative method that uses course descriptions to determine a potential need for library material in related areas. "This is first discussed formally by McGrath and Durand". (McDonald & Micikus, 1990). Many studies in collection evaluation used this method to measure the adequacy of the collection, and McDonald and Micikus summarize some of them:
Golden (1974) recognized the value of course outlines as a more accurate reflection of a college or university’s curriculum and supplemented her efforts to develop a correspondence between classification numbers and library materials with an examination of course outlines, when available, to evaluate the levels of library use required in courses. Her study also used “first day instructions for students,” which were collected from the faculty of the courses selected for examination. Sayles (1985) underlines the usefulness of syllabus and course instructions in the development of library study guides, and Palais (1987), in a report on a method for using the college catalog to derive a collection development policy, recognizes the importance of course syllabi as a way of improving the precision of the data informing the policy. Finally, Anderson (1988) in an insightful article discusses the benefits, generally, of using syllabi as an aid to collection development, as a way of improving communication between librarians and teaching faculty, and as a means for increasing use of library resources.
Historically, many studies related to syllabus analysis or curriculum-collection relationships use a Library of Congress Classification (LCC) approach to the studies. McGrath and Durand (1969) created a method for using LCC schedule to describe the content of courses as listed in the college catalog (1990). Whaley (1981) took a slightly different approach from McGrath and Durand by asking the faculty of the Anthropology Department at the State University of New York at Binghamton to assign the call number in the GN classification schedule to their courses themselves.
For this study, the Brandon/Hill Selected List of Print Nursing Books and Journals , the standard bibliographic reference used to evaluate nursing collections, is employed. The 2002 edition represents 54 subject areas in nursing. This study analyzes each title in the collection and places it into the appropriate subject categories. Each syllabus is analyzed in terms of subject categories, as well.
To insure the cogency of the analysis for use by nursing students, an additional method is employed here, namely, a review of the collection’s age. Because of the scientific foundation of the field, it is imperative that students have timely information. Maintenance of up-to-date information will require additional resources and the continuing diligence of acquisitions staff.
Collection evaluation or collection assessment involves gathering both quantitative and qualitative data, analyzing and integrating that data, and using the results to determine the adequacy and quality of library holdings. List-checking methods help to identify the adequacy of the collection, and evaluation of the curriculum-collection relationship represented by the collection will reflect its overall adequacy and quality. By utilizing both methods, and including a final temporal analysis, a meaningful conclusion can be reached.
List-Checking
The Brandon/Hill Selected List of Print Nursing Books and Journals was selected as a standard bibliography. Every published issue of the List up to 2002 was collected and analyzed. Since first published in 1979, the oldest title in the List published in 1973, some adjustments were needed in order accurately to measure the collection. Thus, a total of 20 titles published before 1973 would be excluded in the calculation here. Furthermore, the 2004 issue of the Brandon/Hill Selected List has not yet been published: therefore, 11 titles that were published after 2002 were also excluded. As a result, 183 titles were checked against the List. The result indicates that 76 titles or 42% of the total holdings matched the list while 107 titles or 57% did not.
Using the subject categories suggested in the Brandon/Hill Selected List as a guideline to analyze each title showed that the Nursing Collection has holdings in 31 Brandon/Hill subject categories. However, the 78 titles that matched the List represent only 23 subject areas, as shown in Fig. 1: that is, the Nursing Collection draws more than half of its titles from the List in only 5 of 26 subject areas.
Figure 1
Number of titles per subject matching Brandon/Hill vs. number of titles not matching Brandon/Hill
The program syllabus analysis provides some important insights into the nature of the curriculum-driven collection. This collection assessment method was used to check the relevancy of the library collection against the curriculum especially in terms of drawing attention to titles missing from the collection. The nursing program at NVCC consists of 13 courses, six of them directly related to nursing. These six courses formed the foundation of the nursing syllabus analysis. They are listed here:
After careful analysis of the course curricula it was determined that there are 16 subjects that should be, but are not currently in the Nursing Collection:
Table 1
The nursing course syllabi were analyzed and categorized into specific nursing related subjects
Collection Age
The oldest book in the collection has a copyright date of 1960, while the newest book has a copyright date of 2004. Fig. 2 shows the respective ages of the books in the collection. The average age of the collection is 17 years.
Figure 2
The number of titles and age
Fig. 3 provides an overview of the average age of nursing collection by subjects. It clearly shows that over half of the collection is more than ten years old.
Figure 3
The average age f the nursing collection by subjects
Voos (1981) remarked that “the evaluation is not necessarily a dichotomous method, i.e., a collection is not just good or bad, meets or does not meet the criteria or objectives, but it is really scalar in that it can be put in a linear quantification to what extent the collection meets the need, objective, or policy.” This collection evaluation endeavored to verify to what extent that the Nursing Collection supports the nursing curriculum as well as to test the collection’s overall strengths and weaknesses. The result from the list-checking evaluation suggests that, throughout the history of this collection, the library has collected reasonable nursing titles in the Nursing Collection. A variety of nursing subjects (titles) have made the collection a viable and important tool for the nursing students and other users. The nursing course syllabi provided essential information about the specifics of the nursing curriculum. Since the evidence from this assessment indicates that the Nursing Collection does not adequately support the nursing program, this is of some concern. Sixteen subjects are not available or are represented unacceptably in some instances: Cancer Nursing and Cardiovascular represent almost half of the entire curriculum in Nurs211 and Nurs212 courses, respectively, and just as notably, Pharmacology is represented in five out of six courses. This implies that the Nursing Collection is not viable for nursing students who want to learn more about those subjects. Furthermore, in the most often mentioned subject in all nursing courses, Patient Education, the library only holds 1 title, and it is 20 years old. Another vital subject in the nursing curriculum, Practical Nursing, the library only owns three titles, and two of them are more than 20 years old. This underscores the importance of collection age as a factor in this assessment. Nursing is a scientific discipline, and currency is a byword in any evaluation of a science collection. As mentioned, the average age of the Nursing Collection is 17 years old, far too old for the study of science. For the last seventeen years, there surely have been published numerous research studies on health-related subjects, and new technologies have developed with which nurses must be conversant, e.g., those contributing to the treatment of kidney disease by dialysis. It is very important to keep the Nursing Collection current, and its age today cannot be judged sufficient
The LRC’s budget, just as that of its parent institution, depends upon state funds. The current state budget deficit may make the LRC overly cautious in devoting its money to collection development. However, the Nursing Collection needs to be up-to-date. The LRC should make every effort to fill out the missing, essential subjects in the collection. Five key nursing subjects are underrepresented or absent, and the situation should be remedied as quickly as circumstances permit. Dated materials should be weeded from the core Nursing Collection and replaced with newer ones, though their retention in the general collection is recommended, since the LRC also serves the public, the faculty, and other students.
Anderson, R. N. (1988, January). Using the syllabus in collection development.
Technicalities, 8(1), 14-15.
Brandon, A. N., Hill, D. R. (1979, October). The Brandon/Hill selected list of print
nursing books and journals. Nursing Outlook, 27(10), 672-680.
Brandon, A. N., Hill, D. R. (1982, March). The Brandon/Hill selected list of print
nursing books and journals. Nursing Outlook, 30(3), 186-1999..
Brandon, A. N., Hill, D. R. (1984, March-April). The Brandon/Hill selected list of print
nursing books and journals. Nursing Outlook, 32(2), 92-101.
Brandon, A. N., Hill, D. R. (1986, March-April). The Brandon/Hill selected list of print
nursing books and journals. Nursing Outlook, 34(2), 74-82.
Brandon, A. N., Hill, D. R. (1988, March-April). The Brandon/Hill selected list of print
nursing books and journals. Nursing Outlook, 36(2), 92-102.
Brandon, A. N., Hill, D. R. (1990, July-August). The Brandon/Hill selected list of print
nursing books and journals. Nursing Outlook, 38(4), 86-95.
Brandon, A. N., Hill, D. R. (1992, March-April). The Brandon/Hill selected list of print
nursing books and journals. Nursing Outlook, 13(3), 139-148.
Brandon, A. N., Hill, D. R. (1994, March). The Brandon/Hill selected list of print nursing
books and journals. Nursing Health Care, 42(2), 71-83.
Brandon, A. N., Hill, D. R. (1996, March-April). The Brandon/Hill selected list of print
nursing books and journals. Nursing Outlook, 44(2), 56-66.
Comer, C. (1981). List-checking as a method for evaluating library collections.
Collection Building, 3(3), 26-34.
Golden, B. (1974). A method for quantitatively evaluating a university library collection.
Library Resources and Technical Services, 18(3), 268-274.
Hill, D. R. (1998, January-Febuary). The Brandon/Hill selected list of print nursing
books and journals. Nursing Outlook, 46(7), 7-16.
Hill, D. R., & Stickell, H. N. (2000, January-Febuary). The Brandon/Hill selected list of
print nursing books and journals. Nursing Outlook, 48(1), 10-22.
Hill, D. R., & Stickell, H. N. (2002, May-June). The Brandon/Hill selected list of print nursing books and journals. Nursing Outlook, 50(3), 100-113.
Intner, S. S., & Futas, E. (1996, Fall). The role and impact of Library of Congress
classification on the assessment of women’s studies collection. Library Acquisitions:
Practice & Theory, 20(3), 267-279.
McDonald, J., & Micikas, L. B. (1990). Collection evaluation and development by
syllabus analysis: the must-ought-could (MOC) method (at Holy Family College). Conferences on acquisitions, budgets, and collections (1st: 1990: St. louis, MO.). Acquisition ’90. Canfield, OH: Gateway & Association, 289-316.
McGrath, W. E., & Durand, N. (1969). Classifying courses in the university catalog. College and Research Libraries, 533-539.
Magrill, R. M. (1985). Evaluation by type of Library. Library Trends, 33(3), 267-295.
Palais, E. (1982). Use of course analysis in compiling a collection development policy
statement for a university library. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 13(1),
8-13.
Sayles, J. W. (1985, January). Course information analysis: foundation for creative
library support. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 10, 343-345.
Voos, H. (1981). Collection Evaluation. Collection Building, 3(1), 6-11.
Whaley, J. H. (1981). An approach to collection analysis. Library Resources and
Technical Services, 25(3), 330-338.
Figure 1 Number of titles per subject matching Brandon/Hill vs. number of titles not matching Brandon/Hill
Figure 2 The number of titles and age
Figure 3 The average age f the nursing collection by subjects
Table 1 The nursing course syllabi were analyzed and categorized into specific nursing related subjects
