From: Nawin <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2012 20:23:44 -0500
With so many different ways to access content, what do the usage statistics
that started this discussion thread include? Obviously, the primary journal
site, but what about aggregators, secondary collections, institutional
repositories, authors' personal sites, and . . . .? And, yes, A&I services
and "to the degree that large-scale full-text searching and textmining is
enabled." In the age of information proliferation, Cliff Notes versions and
discovery tools prevail!
Nawin Gupta
Informed Publishing Solutions, Inc.
-----Original Message-----
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
|
