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The current budgetary climate is forcing libraries to be more selective about e-resource purchases and renewals, and often to consider cancellations. The Mary and Jeff Bell Library at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi has developed a model for assessing the value of our e-resources to our community of patrons that relies on a combination of metrics including content coverage, usage, patron needs and feedback, and costs. The model is applied to decisions about renewal or cancellation and potential new purchases. This session described the model in detail including an explanation of each metric used, the sources of data for each metric, and the weight each metric carries in the overall decision-making process. It concluded with a discussion of how a similar model may be implemented in other libraries.

Availability studies are used to estimate the proportion of items in a library collection that are available to users, and the proportion of items in a library collection that are unavailable to users as a result of system and/or human errors. Sanjeet Mann of the Armacost Library at the University of Redlands used a series of availability studies to more accurately understand and troubleshoot the e-resources access errors that keep undergraduate students at the university from obtaining the full text of electronic resources. In this presentation, Mann shared the details of his process, his results, and the implications of those results for improving local search systems as well as a conceptual model of e-resource availability errors based on the results of his research.

New forms of data like altmetrics are helping librarians to make smarter decisions about their collections. A recent nationwide study administered to librarians at R1 universities shines light on exactly how these metrics are being applied in academia. This article is based on a presentation from the NASIG 31st Annual Conference. It includes survey results addressing previously unknown rates of technology and metrics uptake among collection development librarians, the most popular citation databases and altmetrics services being used to make decisions, and surprising factors that affect attitudes toward the use of metrics.

Members of the NASIG Core Competencies Task Force presented their draft "Core Competencies for Print Serials Librarians," then led a discussion of the document with NASIG conference attendees. The presentation included a brief history of the core competencies and a description of the methodology the Task Force used to conduct the research upon which the draft "Core Competencies for Print Serials Librarians" is based. Discussion with the audience centered on recommendations for improvements to the draft, including the organization of the document, additional coverage of topics such as budgeting, language competencies, the impact of print repositories, and preservation.