New Fields Available in the WEST All Archived Titles Report!

Every two years, when not actively engaged in collections analysis, WEST modifies and enhances the AGUA collection analysis and decision support system to add new features, reports, and tools or improve existing ones. These development phases typically include several projects, but the exact number varies depending on size and complexity. You can read more about AGUA Development (what it is, why we do it, and what goes into it) in our Brief Introduction to AGUA Development. This year, WEST is currently engaged in AGUA Development Phase 7.

As part of Development Phase 7, the AGUA Development Team has completed an enhancement to add five additional fields (columns) in the All Archived Titles report and one additional field (column) in the Archived Titles export from the On Demand Collection Comparison report and Analytics report!

Now in addition to the useful information already available in the All Archived Titles Report, members can also view, sort, and filter on validation information:

• Validation action (583$a)
• Validation level (583$i)
• Completeness validation notes (583$z)
• Condition validation notes (583$z)

For example, if you wanted to see all titles archived by WEST which were validated at the issue level, you can download the WEST All Archived Titles Report (link) and use Excel to filter to only items which contain the words “issue level” in Column M, Validation Level. This could provide you with a targeted list of titles to consider for deselection locally with a high degree of confidence that the WEST Archived title will be there when you need it!

_{Fig. 1 WEST_All_Archived_Titles report filtered to show only items with issue level validation. New columns are highlighted in blue.}

Additionally, we’ve added a column for estimated volumes to both the All Archived Titles Report and the On Demand Collection Comparison and Analytics archived reports. This field looks at the first and last years in the holdings statement of a given record and compares them to the published run in order to estimate the number of volumes held. This field can help members understand the length of a given title or run, which could help members prioritize titles for gap filling, estimate space savings when deselecting, and more!

We hope that these new improvements help to enhance the process of working with these files, and, as always, we would love to hear from you about this new update! If you have comments or feedback about this new update, or question please email the WEST Project Team.