Compare methods

	Citation Analysis for Collection Development	Conspectus Collection Assessment
Field	Library Information Science	Library Information Science
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2005	1995
Originator	Library collection-development literature; Jennifer E. Knievel & Charlene Kellsey (comparative humanities study)	Research Libraries Group (RLG); Western Library Network (WLN); Howard D. White
Type	Bibliometric pipeline applying local citation patterns to collection-building decisions	Structured collection-evaluation pipeline using standardized collecting levels
Seminal source	Knievel, J. E., & Kellsey, C. (2005). Citation Analysis for Collection Development: A Comparative Study of Eight Humanities Fields. The Library Quarterly, 75(2), 142-168.	White, H. D. (1995). Brief Tests of Collection Strength: A Methodology for All Types of Libraries. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. ISBN: 9780313294624
Aliases	Local Citation Analysis, Citation-Based Collection Evaluation, Reference Citation Study, Citation Analysis for Acquisitions	RLG Conspectus, Conspectus Method, Collecting-Level Assessment, WLN Conspectus
Related	3	2
Summary	Citation analysis for collection development studies what a library's own community actually cites, in their theses, dissertations, and publications, and uses those patterns to guide what the library should buy, keep, and cancel. Rather than mapping the global structure of a field, it asks a local, practical question: which formats, languages, ages, and specific titles do our researchers rely on? By tabulating the references in locally produced scholarship, the method reveals, for example, whether a discipline depends on monographs or journals, how quickly its literature ages, and which journals or books appear most often, evidence that can be matched against holdings to find gaps and guide budgets. Knievel and Kellsey's comparative study of eight humanities fields showed how sharply these citation patterns vary by discipline, underscoring why collection decisions should rest on field-specific local evidence.	Conspectus collection assessment is a structured method for describing and evaluating a library collection subject by subject using a standardized framework of collecting levels. Developed by the Research Libraries Group (RLG) and elaborated by the Western Library Network (WLN), the conspectus partitions the universe of knowledge into subject divisions aligned with Library of Congress or Dewey classification and rates each on a 0-to-5 scale that runs from out-of-scope to comprehensive. Crucially, it separates the existing strength of what a library already holds from its current collecting intensity and its collection goal, producing a profile that supports cooperative collection development and comparison across institutions. Howard D. White's Brief Tests of Collection Strength (1995) gave the method an objective verification layer, using graded checklists to corroborate the otherwise judgmental level assignments.