Minding the gaps: Comparing engineering research output and library holdings at four large universities.

This study compares serial subscriptions and holdings of conference proceedings at four large academic engineering libraries in Canada to determine where researchers are publishing, with the goal of better aligning library holdings with research output. Subject areas covered in the study consist of civil and mechanical engineering. The Web of Science (WoS) database was used to extract articles and conference proceedings published by researchers between 2008 and 2013. WoS was selected because it captures more accurate affiliation information for each participating author than other databases such as ASCE, Compendex, and IEEE. Bibliographic data was extracted from the WoS database for the civil and mechanical engineering departments in four engineering faculties and was matched with current holdings, including serials and conference subscriptions. The gaps were analyzed to determine whether additional serials alignments are required. The findings of this study indicate that each of the libraries held at least 80% of the source titles where faculty published, although coverage of journals was stronger than that of conferences. The current study discusses how four large academic libraries have dealt with these collection challenges, and how individually (and as a group) we have aligned our engineering serials collections to our users' publishing patterns and needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]