Statistics: RLF holdings

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Status	In progress
Description	How should holdings from NRLF and SRLF (Northern and Southern Regional Library Facilities - the UC Libraries high-density storage facilities) be reported for various third parties, e.g. UC Risk Management, ACRL, ARL, etc.?
Decision summary
Owning group	AASAP Team sils-aasa-l@listserv.ucop.edu
Approver
Consulted	AASAP Team members Shared Print and RLF experts
Informed	Leadership Group
Decision-making process
Priority
Target decision date	May 19, 2023
Date decided	[type // to add Date]

Recommendation

Provide counts of RLF materials held in the Northern and Southern facilities as distinct reporting units for persistent collections.

Provide separate counts of RLF materials by depositor for non-persistent items (Special Collections, Archives, and non-circulating/restricted materials) for reporting as part of the campuses’ holdings.

[Possible alternative recommendation, pending AASA-PT discussion:] Taking a hybrid approach, provide the counts necessary to support the various reporting needs that exist in the system. (See Options grid below.)

Impact

Stakeholder group	Impact

Stakeholder group	Impact
UC Libraries	Determinations around what and how we report are for the most part managed/owned by the UC Libraries (i.e., shared ownership).
CDL	CDL analysts, who are responsible for constructing report queries at the Network Zone according to templates agreed upon by the UC Libraries, must exclude items based a variety of parameters…
UCOP	Likely, this specifically pertains to our Risk Management Office, who reports holdings information to our insurer, for compliance purposes.

Reasoning

We are seeking to reduce unnecessary and duplicative efforts, and better ensure “apples to apples” reporting by shifting Collections reporting to the Network Zone, wherever possible. Identifying means to save our collective time and effort to produce UCOP data will allow us to focus on new reports, and collections data analysis.

NRLF and SRLF holdings records (vs. suppressed campus records of RLF deposits) should be the authoritative record for reporting the persistent (circulating, non-restricted) collections housed in the two facilities. Campus suppressed records don’t reflect RLF-based deduplication over the years.

Additionally, the RLFs are well positioned to manage the item counts to account for Shared Print Collections without inadvertently double counting those items. Our current practice for counting shared print in system-wide statistics essentially double counts those materials.

Background

Current practice is the UC Libraries RLF holdings have been reported by each campus as part of Schedule D, which is campus physical holdings by resource type and sub-location.

If RLF holdings are reported by original depositor and Shared Print is included in campus reporting and not treated separately, some holdings will not be reflected in our (individual campus?) reports, such as shared print for licensed content and those WEST holdings submitted by non-UC contributors. (Although Non-UC contributions to SP collections represent a small portion of our holdings, we strive to be comprehensive.) Historically, there has always been overlap between the Shared Print Annual Statistics managed by the Shared Print program and the UC Libraries / UCOP Annual Statistics in that those holdings are reported in both. Campuses (onsite and at the RLFs) report shared print holdings as part of the Annual Statistics and for the Shared Print Statistics. Alma Analytics functionality affords us the opportunity to report our data in several different ways.

Options Considered

These are functionally possible within Alma Analytics.

Options	Pros	Cons

Options	Pros	Cons
Option 1 - NRLF + SRLF are reported as part of the UC Berkeley & UCLA data exports	The RLFs share an IZ with these 2 campuses. Completion of a Schedule D with the rest of the campus buildings might be easier.	Does not address interest in reporting the totality of all items ever acquired & never withdrawn, regardless of where stored. Does not reflect original depositors' “liability” for lost or damaged materials. Represents a drastic change in data reporting.
Option 2a - RLFs as distinct reporting units	RLF staff are physically closer to the holdings and greater familiarly with the bibliographic data, so might have more accurate view of what is held.	RLFs are sharing and IZ with a nearby campus, and each party must tease out the appropriate data. If RLFs aspire to be “One collection, two locations,” this falls short of that. For ARL reporting the RLFs are not members, despite having collections large enough to qualify as such.
Option 2b - RLFs as distinct reporting units for persistent items; non-persistent items (Special Collections and non-circulating/restricted materials), reported as part of the campuses’ holdings	For non-persistent items, a distinction needs to be made between processed non-circ items (countable) and unprocessed backlog overflow storage items (not countable). Special collections staff probably are better positioned to distinguish their materials held at the RLFs by using location codes.	Schedule D would need to reflect all of what is physically located in a building, whether persistent or not. Schedule A reporting would have to distinguish between non-circ RLF holdings and everything else.
Option 3 - Holdings attributed to depositing campus. (Status quo)	On some campuses, there is a political need to report the totality of all items ever acquired & never withdrawn, regardless of where stored.	Not all RLF deposits originate with a campus, e.g. items going into a Shared Print collection from the outset, not previously held on a campus.
Option 4 – Hybrid approach which combines Options 1, 2a, 3)	There are multiple audiences for the collected data and differing reporting needs.	In the case of constructing a overview of the UC collective collection, some care must be taken to avoid double counting.

Dependencies

Questions to consider

The committee would like to note that there remains a philosophical question around ownership and how UC might represent our collective collection (shared print, and the persistent, circulating RLF collections). The items that are not shared print don't have a formal agreement around them, but through the persistence policy and the way deposits are set up in the system, they are for practical purposes, also shared print.

Action Log

Action/Point Person	Expected Completion Date	Notes	Status

Action/Point Person	Expected Completion Date	Notes	Status
Gather feedback from experts	Apr 17, 2023	See meeting notes: https://uc-sils.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/AASAPT/pages/2138046475
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