Benchmarkinig--Collecting and Analyzing the Data

I found this chapter in a book because it talks about the use of quantitative data. I tend to think about the quality of a collection, but this chapter talks about reasons to use quantitative data to analyze collections

Kohn, K. (2015). Collection evaluation in academic libraries: a practical guide for librarians. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Benchmarking—Collecting and Analyzing the Data Chapter 4 (20 pages)

Focus on numbers of books or other materials rather than specific titles owned or used

Data can be used to compare to different collections in your library and also to look at libraries of similar size.

Ways to use Benchmarking:

1. To advertise

2. To plan collaborative collection development

3. To justify budget requests

4. To allocate existing budget

5. To know what to buy

6. To weed