Post Cancellation Access Collections to Improve ER Troubleshooting and Collection Development

At Minnesota State University, Mankato, we actively maintain and reconcile Post Cancellation Access (PCA) Collections in the Alma Library Management System (LMS). These collections enable us to distinguish permanent holdings from leased holdings, which would go away if we stopped subscribing. In consequence, (1) our troubleshooting burden is reduced, (2) we can judge the value of our subscriptions more accurately, and (3) we can pursue collection development projects and reporting more quickly, with deeper understanding.

We will demonstrate our process to gather information from vendors and to set up PCA collections using locally developed best practices. We will show how we use our LMS to track and understand potential PCA rights in our licenses. We will talk about why it’s important to invest the time up-front, in order to optimize the benefits available from these processes, including vastly improved reporting options. We will exhibit some of the reports which utilize the PCA collections data. These reports enable us to pursue collection development strategically and extremely efficiently. They also enable powerful data visualizations to improve understanding across stakeholders.