From: Frederick Friend <[log in to unmask]> Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2012 12:54:46 +0100 I agree with Joan Stein's review of the work that has been carried out over many years. We have learned a great deal about both usage and value, and I found the ACRL report particularly valuable in directing attention to institutional definitions of what constitutes value. It is in the institutional context that usage statistics can be of value, and if there is an answer to Ann's question it has to be reached institution by institution, defining the factors which apply in each institution on issues such as proportion of current and past acquisitions which are electronic or paper. The risk of inaccuracy comes when usage statistics are cumulated, e.g. to say that "US libraries are now gaining greater value from their electronic resources than from their paper resources", because value cannot be cumulated in the same way as usage statistics. Inaccuracy also creeps in when financial information is combined with usage statistics and treated as an indication of value. A statement such as "US libraries are only paying x cents for each item downloaded" is meaningless as a measure of value in isolation from the institutional and user environments which give content its value. An interesting discussion! Fred Friend Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL -----Original Message----- From: Joan Stein <[log in to unmask]> Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2012 12:40:51 -0400 Subject: Re: E-resources usage statistics: up, down, or steady? There is a great deal of research being done by the assessment community in the United States, the UK, and Australia (probably other countries as well that I'm not familiar with) on the value of e-resources, particularly e-journals at this stage but the research on the value of e-books is beginning. There has been a thin stream of such research for a few decades, much of it done by Carol Tenopir and Don King, but research activity has moved into high gear on this topic over the past three or four years for a variety of reasons, including the Value of Academic Libraries Report commissioned by ACRL and researched & written by Megan Oakleaf and the IMLS grant received by several institutions to study library value, including the value of e-resources. The research in UK and Australian has been driven by their own national reasons. I'd recommend taking a look at the website for the IMLS-funded project: http://libvalue.cci.utk.edu/biblio which has an extensive bibliographic database of articles on a variety of aspects of library value, including e-resoures. JISC in the UK has also funded research in this area. In general, the research is less about the number of uses and more about the impact of the usage on the user. Do e-resources make faculty, for example, more efficient researchers & teachers? Do they save them time (that can then be directed towards other aspects of their responsibilities as researchers and teachers?), etc. Impact, especially when/if it aligns with institutional goals and priorities, is a more significant measure than number of uses. A relatively new study reports also on the number of e-articles researchers read on average per year, along with other elements related to the value of e-journals - the title is "Scholarly Reading and the Value of Library Resources: A Survey". Information and links to presentations and publications about the study can be found here: http://libvalue.cci.utk.edu/JISC Research in this area from public libraries and special libraries goes back further than that for academic libraries and is not difficult to unearth via Google. Regards, Joan Joan Stein Head, Access Services Carnegie Mellon University Libraries