Announcing the Completion of New Enhancements for the AGUA Analysis and Decision Support Tool
During the past year, the WEST Development and Project teams have worked together to realize six important enhancements for the AGUA tool. We are pleased to announce that these enhancements have been successfully tested and are now live in the AGUA system.
The six enhancements completed during this last phase of development impact multiple stages of WEST’s archiving activity. They are, in summary:
For Unarchived Holdings Data (what WEST is gathering right now!)
ISSN Retrieval: The WEST Collection Analysis process is currently dependent on ISSN. ISSN serves as the match point for the external data sources that allow us to group titles into families and title categories. Now, we will be able to retrieve additional ISSNs for WEST collections analysis by using OCLC number and the WorldCat API. Testing demonstrates that this will significantly impact the number of records that will be incorporated into analysis.
For Collection Analysis
All & Others Report: Produced early in the process of collections analysis, this report not only lists the proposed archive holder or builder, but also other institutions in WEST with holdings for eligible titles. This comprehensive report supports initial distribution assessment in WEST’s collection analysis period. The report can also facilitate analysis projects around potential space creation or last/scarce copy identification.
Download/Display Summary by Institution and Summary by Category Reports: Previously, these reports were only visible to the WEST Project Team. Now, any AGUA user can view and download these two reports. The reports are summaries of all eligible material among WEST institutions that submitted their unarchived holdings data for analysis. Among other things, the Summary by Institution report shows the distribution of records per institution by Title Category. The Summary by Category report breaks down the number of journal families by duplication level and Title Category.
Additional Bibliographic Fields for Group Analysis: As part of the effort to refine collections analysis in WEST, the Development Team has added a number of fields to ensure certain material is included or excluded from the final set of proposals. These fields include:
- LC Class
- Language of the Publication
- Country of Origin for the Publication
- Frequency (monthly, annual, etc.)
- Status (ceased, active, researched, etc.)
- For WEST Members making commitments in AGUA
Re-propose to Other Institutions functionality added to the commitment process: WEST Archive Holders and Builders use the AGUA Tool to commit to proposed journal families. Previously, users had two options: commit or do not commit. This enhancement adds nuance to decisions not to commit to journal families. If Archive Holders and Builders are unable to commit to a particular journal family, they can now choose “Do Not Commit; This Year Only” or “Do Not Commit; Do Not Re-propose.” If the second option is selected, a note is made in the database, and during the next round of collection analysis, the journal family will be re-proposed to an entirely new institution. This enhancement supports more strategic proposals of eligible WEST material.
For Gap-Filling and Journal Review Projects
On Demand Collection Comparison Report: Some WEST members have already begun using this tool for journal review projects. The report provides an instantaneous comparison of library holdings with WEST’s archived titles and is available to both WEST Supporting and Full Members. Check out the webinar under WEST Presentations for more details.
A special thanks to the WEST Development Team at CDL for their continued dedication to developing AGUA!