From: "Skib, Bryan" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2012 16:30:40 +0000
What counts as use?
For reading, there would have to be leveling off unless campus
enrollments and staffing increase. How much can one person consume in
this manner? Expansion of access to alumni or the general public would
of course change the demographics. Further, the max number of uses
will be distributed across an ever larger body of materials, competing
for attention. The percent of older material that continues to see use
should be higher for digital than for print, given ease of access.
Will aggregate collection management and demand-driven acquisition
strategies reduce the portion of our collections that never see use?
Will restrictions on resource sharing reduce the external use of what
we choose to license?
If the question is about use of online reference works and A&I
services, users may well prefer other tools.
Higher portions of the content might see a different form of use to
the degree that large-scale full-text searching or textmining is
enabled.
My local picture strikes me as mixed, with continued (but slowing)
growth in use -- and yet I hesitate to jump to conclusions since
(overall) we are not always comparing apples to apples, or counting
the same things in the same way.
Bryan Skib
Associate University Librarian for Collections
818 Hatcher Library
University of Michigan
-----Original Message-----
From: Ann Shumelda Okerson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2012 18:24:35 -0400
Dear All: There's a discussion thread on the "lis-e-resources group"
(UK) regarding an apparent decline in usage statistics for various
electronic resources. Not all resources data are down, but a large
number are, it would seem.
If your library has experienced this, to what do you attribute it? What
actions are being taken? (cancellation, user education, implement
discovery systems, etc?)
See, my own fledgling theory all along has been that e-use has been
hugely growing BUT that there are real limits. The question is, when
would we observe these? I.e., as the number of e-resources online
moves from zero (15 years ago) to 100% (let's also pretend that in 10
years everything that wants to be converted from print will have been
converted, plus there will be all the new stuff), usage of resources will
at least level off.
It's routinely observed that some high percentage of print (academic)
library resources are rarely if ever used (40%), and in a given year
perhaps up to 80% of a research library's print resources aren't used.
Are we heading in a parallel direction for electronic info?
Perhaps librarians AND publishers would chime in here on this topic,
for a breadth of experience.
Thank you, Ann Okerson
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