The primary focus of collection evaluation and assessment has been the subjective judgment of the strengths and weaknesses of library collections. The process has generally been a local application, often utilizing peer group comparative data. Quantitative collection analysis to support the subjective processes of collection evaluation and assessment is now almost universally conducted through extraction of data from local systems or network databases. National collecting patterns can be studied through the use of data extracted from the bibliographic utilities. This article examines the use of data from the OCLC/AMIGOS Collection Analysis CD and standard statistical series as a methodology for studying national collecting patterns. Findings on national collecting patterns from 1986-1995 in academic libraries in the United States utilizing the methodology are presented.
A survey of the global karst community was conducted in 2006. The survey was distributed via the World Wide Web to known karst researchers. The instrument was designed to generate an initial inventory of core grey information types, to assess levels of usage of grey information by the respondents, and to gauge the karst community's willingness to participate in building and expanding both this collection and the associated controlled vocabularies.
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