Keep calm and gather on: Surviving e-resource use statistics

Abstract

With shrinking budgets and the proliferation of subscription databases and electronic journals, librarians may find it very difficult to determine the best way to allocate their funds to support the curriculum and research needs of faculty and students in their assigned schools/departments. Project COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources), developed in 2002, has helped with comparing use statistics from different vendors. But not all vendors comply with COUNTER standards, or even provide use statistics in any form. As stated in the 2010 report The Value of Academic Libraries, usage statistics do not give librarians an indication of why patrons use a particular resource, or how, or even if, the resource was used in research or coursework. But “academic librarians often equate use and value” (Oakleaf, p. 50). Use statistics will give librarians an indication of whether or not a resource, either expensive or inexpensive, is being used. At the very least, librarians should have an idea of which resources are being used in their libraries. But as Jill Grogg (2010) noted in Users, Use and Usage Statistics, “the collection and analysis of usage statistics often gets pushed further down the to-do list for busy librarians charged with the acquisition and maintenance of electronic resources” ( p. 94). But gathering this data does not have to be an incredibly arduous task. Utilizing an e-resource access and management tool, such as those available from Ebsco and ProQuest, aids in gathering use statistics. These tools, combined with email and other software used every day, can make the daunting task of gathering use statistics much less stressful. This poster session will illustrate the work done for a large, urban university library at a multi-campus institution to gather and disseminate use statistics of its numerous, and often specialized, electronic resources. Helpful tips, as well as unavoidable pitfalls will also be highlighted. Librarians working with budgets in excess of $2 million or those with much smaller budgets will find this poster helpful when developing a project to collect use statistics to get the biggest bang for their buck.