The 118 titles recommended for subscription as a result of the above process were located in 31 of the 33 curriculum cores. Two small cores—Biological and Agricultural Engineering and Fisheries, the former related to the College of Engineering, the latter to the College of Agriculture—required no new subscriptions. The new subscriptions were also characterized by highly skewed distributions. Of the curriculum cores requiring new subscriptions, five accounted for 41 (34.7%) of the 118 new subscriptions, 1,917 (36.0%) of the 5,320 faculty score points of the new subscriptions, and $38,840 (47.4%) of the $81,882 cost of the new subscriptions. However, unlike the measures for the total size of the cores, there was not a complete overlap of the five dominant curriculum cores in new subscriptions. Only three cores—Geology & Geophysics, Physics, and Zoology & Physiology—appeared in the top five cores on all three aspects of new subscription size (i.e., number of titles), faculty score, and costs. Physics and Zoology & Physiology had consistently appeared among the five dominant cores in total titles, faculty score, and costs, whereas Geology & Geophysics had always appeared among the top eight cores on these measures.
In their distribution over the curriculum cores, all three new subscription measures of size were highly and positively intercorrelated. The Spearman rank-order correlation coefficients of new subscription titles, faculty score, and cost over the cores ran from 0.64 to 0.89, with the correlation of new subscription cost with new subscription faculty score at the bottom of the range and with new subscription titles at the top of the range. However, a different picture emerged when it came to the correlations of the new subscription measures with the overall core size measures. Here only total number of core titles and total core cost correlated with all three measures of new subscription size with the Spearman rank-order coefficients ranging from 0.45 to 0.71. The anomaly was total core faculty score, which had no significant correlation with either new subscription titles or cost, although it had a significant Spearman rank-order coefficient of 0.57 with new subscription faculty score.
The reason for the anomaly of the lack of significant correlations of total core faculty score with both new subscription titles and cost emerged during the analysis of the new subscription measures in terms of their percentage relationship to their equivalent size measures of their respective cores. Once again the distributions were highly and positively skewed. In terms of the percentage of new subscription titles to total core titles, the top five cores ranged from 20.3% to 46.2% with a mean of 34.1%, compared to the overall mean 10.5% for all 33 cores. In terms of percentage of new subscription faculty score to total core faculty score, the top five cores ranged from 36.5% to 61.3% with a mean of 45.8%, compared to the overall mean of 16.8% for all 33 curriculum cores. And in terms of percentage of new subscription cost to total core cost, the top five cores ranged from 30.2% to 60.0% with a mean of 45.0%, compared to the overall mean of 13.6% for all 33 cores. Three cores—Climatology, Food Science, and Human Nutrition and Food—consistently appeared among the five dominant cores in this respect, and, unlike the finding with the new subscription measures in actual numbers, these three cores were always among the smaller ten cores in terms of total titles, faculty score, and costs.
Spearman rank-order correlation tests were performed to analyze the new subscription measures as percentages of their respective core measures in the following three respects: (1) their relationship to each other, (2) their relationship to the new subscription measures in actual numbers, and (3) their relationship to total core size measures. Concerning the first, the new subscription measures as percentages of their respective core measures were highly intercorrelated on all aspects of title number, faculty score, and costs, with the coefficients ranging from 0.79 to 0.88.
However, when it came to the relationship to new subscription measures as percentages of their respective core measures to these measures in actual numbers, the same discrepancy appeared as was found with the correlation of total core size measures with new subscription measures in actual numbers. The new subscription subscription measures as percentages of their respective core measures correlated well with these measures in actual numbers on the aspects of titles and cost with coefficients ranging from 0.47 to 0.63. In contrast, the faculty score aspects of these new subscription measures had a significant correlation only with each other (0.36) but no significant correlations with the measures on the aspects of title number and cost.
The meaning of this phenomenon became clear with the correlation tests of the new subscription measures as percentages of their respective core measure to the total core size measures. Here the only significant correlations were those of total core faculty score with new subscription measures as percentages of their respective core measures on all three aspects of title number, faculty score, and cost. These correlations were all negative, ranging from -0.44 to -0.47, i.e., the lower the total faculty score of the core, the higher the new subscriptions as percentages of core titles, faculty score, and cost.
The implications of this finding are obvious: the ST serials holdings of LSU Libraries tended to be more damaged in those subject areas where faculty interest and political power were weaker. Such a conclusion is buttressed by the Spearman rank-order coefficient of 0.56 found above between the percentage faculty response of academic units to the SRP survey and the 1993 National Research Council peer ratings of these units' scholarly quality, where such comparisons could be made. The latter finding was cited as evidence that the faculty who were engaged in research that was recognized at the national level tended to have more concern for the state of LSU Libraries' serials holdings.
For purposes of deeper analysis, the new subscription titles were stratified into those located in the top 50% of the faculty score in the desired universe of their respective curriculum cores and those located in the midrange of the faculty score from 51% to 75%. In the ensuing discussion, the first category will be described as the "high faculty score" set, and the second category will be called the "mid-faculty score" set. The high faculty score set contained 53 of the 118 new subscription titles, and the mid-faculty score set had 65 of these titles. Of the titles in the high faculty score set, 15 (28.3%) were U.S. association serials.
The new subscriptions for both the high faculty score and the mid-faculty score sets were located in 25 curriculum cores, 6 fewer than the 31 cores that required "overall" new subscriptions, i.e., the combined new subscriptions from both sets. However, there was a major difference between the six curriculum cores that required no further high faculty score new subscriptions and the six needing no further mid-faculty score new subscriptions. The former tended to be concentrated either in the general cores related to two or more academic units or in the cores related to College of Basic Sciences. Five—Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, General Agriculture, and General Science—were of this nature, whereas the sixth, Forestry, resembled the two cores that required no new subscriptions at all in that it was a smaller core related to a technological unit, in this case the College of Agriculture. From this perspective, the eight cores that required no new high faculty score subscriptions were evenly split between basic science and technology.
In contrast, the six cores that required no new mid-faculty score subscriptions resembled for the most part the two that required no new subscriptions at all in that they were generally small cores that related to academic units engaged in technology and not basic science. Four— Entomology, Experimental Statistics, Plant Pathology & Crop Physiology, and Wildlife—were related to the College of Agriculture, and one—Petroleum Engineering—was related to the College of Engineering. The sixth such core was Mathematics, which was connected with the College of Arts & Sciences. Taken all together, the eight curriculum cores that needed no new mid-faculty score subscriptions broke down into seven related to technology and one to basic science.
The mean faculty score of the overall new subscription titles was 45.1. In comparison, the high faculty score set average on this measure was 51.8, and the mid-faculty score set average was 39.6. The same pattern held in terms of costs: whereas the mean cost of the overall new subscription titles was $693.92, for high faculty score titles it was $753.74, and for mid-faculty score titles, $645.14. Nevertheless, the higher ST value of the high faculty score titles overcame their price disadvantage on a global basis. These titles accounted for 44.9% of the overall new subscription titles but 51.6% (2,747 of 5,320) of the faculty score points found in the overall new subscription set and 48.8% ($39,948 of $81,882) of the cost of this set.
The advantage of the high faculty score titles over the mid-faculty score titles in terms of global ST value and cost held true when averaged for all 33 curriculum cores. Of the mean of 3.6 overall new subscription titles per core, 1.6 was attributable to the high faculty score set, and 2.0 to the mid-faculty score set. The reverse held true for the means of the overall new subscription titles for the 33 cores in terms of faculty score and cost. Concerning the former, the mean of 161.2 overall new subscription faculty score points per core broke into 83.2 for the high faculty score titles and 78.0 for the mid-faculty score titles, whereas the mean overall new subscription cost of $2,481.27 per core divided into $1,210.54 for the high faculty score set and $1,270.73 for the mid-faculty score set.
In the manner characteristic of library and information science, both the high and the mid-faculty score distributions were highly and positively skewed, manifesting a tendency to concentrate in a few curriculum cores. Concerning the high faculty score distributions, five cores accounted for 22 (41.5%) of the 53 of the high faculty score titles, 978 (35.6%) of the 2,747 faculty score points attributable to these titles, and $22,266 (55.7%) of the $39,948 cost of these titles. Interestingly, there was no overlap among the five dominant cores on these high faculty score measures, and no Spearman rank-order correlation coefficients of these measures with core size measures were significant except for the ones of high faculty score points with total number of core titles (0.38) and total core costs (0.39).
As with the high faculty score distributions, those for the mid-faculty score new subscription measures followed the pattern of concentrating on a few cores. Here five dominant cores accounted for 31 (47.7%) of the 65 mid-faculty score titles, 1,204 (46.8%) of the 2,573 faculty score points attributable to these titles, and $23,036 (54.9%) of the total $41,934 cost of these titles. However, unlike the high faculty score titles, there was an overlap of the mid-faculty score measures on two cores, Biology and Physics, which were among the five cores dominant on all measures of core size. Furthermore, every mid-faculty score measure had significant positive Spearman rank-order coefficients ranging from 0.42 to 0.65 with all measures of total core size except in one case that involved the relationship of mid-faculty score new subscription cost to total core faculty score.
From this finding it is evident that mid-faculty score new subscriptions were related to core size, while high faculty score new subscriptions were not. Moreover, whereas both the high faculty score and mid-faculty score new subscription measures tended to be highly correlated among themselves and with overall new subscription measures, they showed little relationship between each other, and for the most part the Spearman rank-order coefficients between the high faculty score and mid-faculty score new subscription measures were not significant.
An extremely interesting picture emerged from the analysis of the high faculty score and mid-faculty score new subscription measures as percentages of their respective core measures. Here, once again, the phenomenon of concentration manifested itself. Concerning the high faculty score measures, in terms of percentage of total core titles, the highest 5 cores ranged from 14.3% to 30.8% with a mean of 25.0%, compared to the overall new subscription mean of 10.5% for the 33 cores. In terms of percentage of total core faculty score, the highest 5 cores ranged from 24.8% to 49.7% with a mean of 36.7%, compared to the overall new subscription mean of 16.8% for the 33 cores. And in terms of percentage of total core cost, the highest 5 cores ranged from 19.1% to 39.2% with a mean of 28.5%, compared to the overall new subscription mean of 13.6% for the 33 cores.
As for the mid-faculty score measures, in terms of percentage of total core titles, the highest 5 cores ranged from 8.7% to 18.8% with a mean of 13.8%, compared to the high faculty score mean of 25.0% and the overall mean of 10.5%. In terms of percentage of total core faculty score, the highest 5 cores ranged from 11.6% to 21.6% with a mean of 14.7%, compared to the high faculty score mean of 36.7% and the overall mean of 16.8%. And in terms of percentage of total core cost, the highest 5 cores ranged from 16.1% to 30.3% with a mean of 22.1%, compared to the high faculty score mean of 28.5% and the overall mean of 13.6%.
The most significant revelation of these comparisons of mean core percentages is that the high faculty score new subscriptions tended to have a much greater impact than the mid-faculty score ones. This impression was reinforced by the finding that the mean percentages of the overall new subscription measures as percentages of their respective curriculum core measures broke down in the following manner: of the mean 10.5% of overall new subscription titles per core, 6.2% were high faculty score titles and 4.3% were mid-faculty score titles; of the mean 16.8% of overall new subscription faculty score, roughly 11.3% came from high faculty scores and 5.5% from mid-faculty scores; and of the mean 13.6% of overall new subscription costs, 7.7% were high faculty score costs and 5.9% were mid-faculty score costs.
The fundamental reasons for the greater impact of the high faculty score new subscriptions over that of the mid-faculty score ones lay not only in the higher average ST value of the former over the latter but also in the dichotomy in the way these two sets were distributed over the curriculum cores. This dichotomy had manifested itself in the finding that in terms of actual numbers the mid faculty score new subscription measures were related to the measures of core size, while the high faculty score ones were not.
Concerning distribution over cores, unlike high faculty score new subscription measures in terms of actual numbers, these measures as percentages of core titles, faculty score, and cost, overlapped in their 5 respective dominant cores on 3 of them—Climatology, Food Science, and Human Nutrition. These were precisely the same three cores where this overlap had occurred in the case of the overall new subscription measures as percentages of their respective core measures. The three cores were among the smallest on all aspects of core size, but only total core faculty score had consistently significant Spearman rank-order correlations with the high faculty score new subscription measures as percentages of their respective core measures. Once again, as with overall new subscriptions, these coefficients were all negative, ranging from -0.47 to -0.60, indicating that the damage to the ST serials holdings of LSU Libraries in terms of high faculty score titles had occurred where faculty interest and political power were weaker.
A different picture emerged from the analysis of mid-faculty score new subscription measures as percentages of their respective core measures in relation to their distribution over the curriculum cores. Overlap of all the mid-faculty score new subscription measures in these terms occurred among their own five dominant cores only on one of them, General Technology & Engineering, which ranked among the highest eight cores in number of titles and costs but only at the median in terms of faculty score. Moreover, there were no significant correlations of core size measures with mid-faculty score new subscription measures as percentages of their respective core measures. Everything taken together indicated that, unlike the high faculty score titles (where damage was inversely related to the amount of faculty interest and political pressure), the damage to the mid-faculty score titles was more random and influenced by core size.
The importance of high faculty score new subscriptions in overall new subscriptions is revealed in the concept of "leverage." Leverage was defined as the ratio of the percentage of faculty score to the percentage of cost. In this way, for example, if the percentage of faculty score were equal to the percentage of cost, the ratio of faculty score to cost would be 1 to 1, and the leverage would be zero. If the percentage of faculty score were 1.5 times greater than the percentage of cost, the ratio of faculty score to cost would be 1.5 to 1, and the leverage would be positive. Finally, if the percentage of faculty score were half of the percentage of cost, the ratio of faculty score to cost would be 0.5 to 1, and the leverage would be negative.
Leverage was calculated in the three following ways: (1) total leverage–the percentage of the total working universe faculty score to the percentage of the total working universe cost; (2) average leverage–the average of the percentages of faculty score of core faculty score for the 33 cores to the average of the percentages of cost of core cost for the 33 cores; and (3) core-by-core leverage—the percentage of faculty score of core faculty score to the percentage of new subscription cost of core cost for each individual core. In the core-by-core method, no leverage was calculated for those cores where none had taken place, i.e., for those cores not having new subscriptions at the level at which the leverage was being calculated.
For overall new subscriptions, total leverage was 1.46 to 1; for high faculty score new subscriptions, it was 1.55 to 1; and for mid-faculty score ones, it was 1.38 to 1. Here it can be seen that much of the total leverage of the overall new subscriptions came from the high faculty score new subscriptions. Concerning average leverage, for overall new subscriptions, it was 1.2 to 1; for high faculty score subscriptions, it was 1.5 to 1; and for mid-faculty score new subscriptions, it was already negative at 0.9 to 1. As with total leverage, high faculty score new subscriptions were crucial in average leverage. On a core- by-core basis, the range of overall subscription leverage ran from 0.3 to 1 in Animal Science to 22.4 to 1 in Plant Biology, with a mean of 3.1 to 1. The range of high faculty score new subscriptions ran from 0.5 to 1 in Animal Science to 29.8 to 1 in Environmental Studies with a mean of 5.4 to 1. The range of mid-faculty score new subscriptions ran from 0.2 to 1 in Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering to 20.8 to 1 in Plant Biology with a mean of 2.8 to 1.
The fundamental dichotomy between high faculty score and mid-faculty score new subscriptions also showed itself in the matter of leverage. This was demonstrated with correlation analyses involving leverage calculated on a core-by-core basis. Whereas both high faculty score and mid-faculty score new subscription leverage were highly correlated with overall new subscription leverage—the former having a Spearman coefficient of 0.70 and the latter having one of 0.85—the correlation between them was insignificant. Moreover, mid-faculty score new subscription leverage correlated well with all three measures of core size (number of titles, faculty score, and cost), the Spearman coefficients ranging from 0.41 to 0.64. However, there was only one significant correlation of the six possible ones of the core size measures with overall and high faculty score new subscription leverage—the relatively low and barely significant Spearman coefficient of 0.36 between total core faculty score and overall leverage. Once, again, it was revealed that mid-faculty score new subscriptions were basically dependent on core size, whereas, for the most part, overall and high score new subscriptions were not.