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TITLE:
Decision Making and Uncertainty

AUTHOR(S):
Donald G. Davis Jr., University of Texas at Austin
E. Stewart Saunders, Purdue University

KEYWORDS: RLG Conspectus

DOCUMENT TYPE: Article

Published in: Journal of Academic Librarianship 17(January 1992):356-7.

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ABSTRACT:
In an article intitled, “Epistemological Dead End and Ergonomic Disaster? The North Amercian Collections Inventory Project,” Journal of Academic Librarianship 13 (September 1987): 209-213, David Henige charges that academic libraries are deceiving themselves when they assign a number to a subject collection and claim that this number represents the strength of the collection. Assigning numbers or levels to subject collections is the methodology used by the RLG Conspectus to rate academic collections. This article by Davis and Saunders offers a counter argument, based on subjective probabilities, to justify the RLG procedure.