A Review on the Collection Development of Print and Electronic Resources at the Tsinghua University Library

Prof. Xue Fang Yu

Director, Tsinghua University Library

1. Collection Development at Tsinghua University Library i. The electronic resources collection of Tsinghua Univeristy Library ha

s been expanding rapidly in recent years. By the end of 2007, the Library has acquired 42,000 titles of full-text e-journals, in which around 28,000 titles are in English, while about 16,000 titles are in Chinese. The Library has another 1.14M volumes of e-books, in which 420,000 volumes are in English, and 710,000 volumes are in Chinese.

Type Electronic resources databases

Full-text e-journals

E-books No. of downloads (full-text e-journals)

No. of views(e-books)

2001 187 14,430 204,000

2007 385 44,189 1,138,364 6,610,000 228,137

Increase %

109％ 206％ 458%

ii. The print collection of the Library is also expanding, however, the number of newly purchased English-language books and journals have been shrinking continuously in the past few years. In 2007, the Library has acquired 98,000 volumes of Chinese-language print books, and 1,020 English-language print journals.

iii. Usage of our Collection

No. of downloads (e-journals)

No. of views(e-books)

No. of Loans

(print books)

2006 9,090,000 217,719 1,280,000

2007 6,610,000 228,137 1,190,000

iv. In a library reader survey conducted in 2005, 98.8% of the interviewees indicated that electronic resources are very important or important for their research and study; over 90% of the interviewees have used electronic resources before.

Concerning the usage pattern of library resources, 72.7% of users revealed that print book is the type of resource they use most frequently, while 23.9% of them use electronic resources more frequently. In terms of journals, 25.3% of users use print journals, while 77.5% of them use e-journals.

“Our print book and e-book collections will continue to expand, while the expansion rate of electronic resources will be much faster than print items. The amount of print journals acquired by our Library is expected to drop by 1% each year. In case a reliable third party journal perseverance policy is being approved, the amount will drop significantly.”

Sheridan Libraries of the Johns Hopkins University Strategic Plan 2006-2011

2. Insights from world-class university libraries

“The Library will continue to offer a ‘hybrid library’ service, combining paper and electronic resources as appropriate in each subject area. The growth of electronic resources will not be matched by an equivalent decline in the publication or use of traditional paper-based library resources, except possibly in some of the sciences. The Library will have to meet the challenge of providing an integrated infrastructure for research, by expanding the digital library and at the same time safeguarding the print collections that still underpin research in many subjects. Planning will be needed for a potential move to electronic-only provision of journals in some of the sciences.”

Cambridge University Library

Strategic Plan 2005-2010

“Establishing a ‘virtual library’ is a widely recognized direction for university libraries to adapt to the transformation from print book service model to electronic resource service model. If the economic situation approves, the Library shall acquire as many electronic resources as possible, so as to expand the amount of resources available to the University community.”

Drexel University LibrariesStrategic Plan 2004-2006

“Within the context of a hybrid library environment, in which there will be an increasing emphasis on electronic library resources, OULS (Oxford University Library Services) will continue to build its traditional world-class collections while greatly augmenting access to electronic materials, whether by subscription, Open Access, electronic legal deposit, digitisation, or other means.”

Oxford University Library Vision for 2011

“By 2020 we do not expect to have print materials held on site in the SEQ2 Library. The library will offer access to specialized online collections to facilitate research, teaching and learning. Space formerly dedicated to print materials will have been gradually repurposed to community space, exhibit space, spaces for individual and group study.”

Stanford University LibrariesSEQ2 Library Vision: The Information Collaboratory

ARL2005-2006

i. Due to copyright matters, e-version of popular books are often launched far after its publication date.

3. Reasons hinder users from using e-books

ii. Limitation of service model

iii. The contents of scanned books are often not being well organized and managed. They cannot fully demonstrate the advantages of digitalization.

iv. Traditional reading behaviors of users.

4. Review

i. Building a ‘hybrid library’ will continuously be the long-term collection development strategy of Tsinghua University Library. We will however allocate a higher proportion of our budget on the acquisition of electronic resources.

ii. The digitalization of journals (esp. English-language journals) will speed up in the foreseeable future. For books, print and electronic version will grow simultaneously. Through acquiring e-books, it is believed that our English-language collection will expand rapidly.

iii. Science books and journals will continuously being transformed into electronic resources. Print books will still being regarded as the most important medium of resources for the humanities field. (esp. classical works)

iv. Digitalization of our existing collection will help solving problems incurred from the usage of rare items and popular books.

vii. We will collaborate with other libraries to further strengthen the shared access on print and electronic collections.

viii. We will actively search for free-of-charge resources on the Internet to expand our collections.

v. Our Library will speed up the merge of electronic and print resources.

vi. We will actively promote the use of electronic resources, including e-books.

Thank You