Managing Digital Collections and User

Expectations

Society for Scholarly PublishingSan Francisco June, 2004James MouwThe University of Chicagomouw@uchicago.edu

Topicsn Overview of the UofC Library

collections and usersn Providing access to many productsn Access mechanismsn Backroom issuesnWhat suppliers can do to help

n Measuring usagen The impact of usage

The landscape

n ~12,500 FTEn ~$15,000,000 for materialsn ~$2,000,000 for electronic resources

• Does not include some multiple-format purchases

Budget Categories

$0.00

$2,000,000.00

$4,000,000.00$6,000,000.00$8,000,000.00

$10,000,000.00$12,000,000.00

$14,000,000.00$16,000,000.00

89/90

92/93

95/96

98/99

99/00

00/01

01/02

02/03

03/04

ElectronicSerialsTotal

The landscape

n Increasing reliance on electronic accessn Actively canceling print to afford

continued access when we cannot continue both

n Increasing number of titles available electronically

Proportion electronic Total

Serials Electronic Full-text

Percent

1998 38,500 5,700 15%

2002 2004

41,000 42,417

20,000 37,000

48% 87%

The landscape

n Much attention paid to increasing access n OpenURL technologyn Federated searchingn Citation software

n Viewed as a collection expensen Much attention paid to statistics

The landscapen Linking is “mission critical”

n SFX controls 29,963 full-text copies• 17,581 unique titles

n Backfiles are purchased and usedn Looking for ways to stabilize ongoing

expenses –even when this means paying more now

n Purchasing almost no new print titles when electronic version is available

The landscape

n Users always want moren LibQual study reveals that the only

place we don’t meet “minimal expectations” is in the area of print and electronic resources

• http://www.libqual.org/

n Large differences in usage among products

Many (redundant) access mechanisms requiredn Catalogn E-resource listsn Various subject pagesn A-Z e-journal listingn The issues

n Replication of datan Inconsistency of datan No single complete sourcen Limited resources availablen Linking together various versions of the same

content difficult

Many (redundant) access mechanisms required

n The responsen Various vended products availablen MARC record sets availablen NISO/Editeur joint working partyn ISSN revision underway

Many means to an end

The catalog approach

The e-resources approach

The e-resources approach

Various subject pages

The A-Z journal title approach

The A-Z journal title approach – appropriate use

Major issues we facen Disentangling all of the aboven Maintaining consistencyn How to help the user select the best

resourcen Maintenancen Our approachn Do as much as we can through a single

behind-the-scenes ERM

What suppliers can don Give us a contact pointn Aim for stabilityn Don’t change URL’sn Announce changes well in advance

n Make renewals easiern Contact us before an auto-expire kicks

inn Adopt the concept of “graced issues”

Measuring usage

n Why do we care?n What matters?n What is acceptable?n What some libraries are doingn Emerging standardsn Impact of usage

Usage – why we care

n Only measure we haven Enormous expenditure of resources

– need to justifyn Want to provide the products that

our patrons usen Beginning to matter for reportingn Used for continuation decisions

Usage – what matters

n Product dependentn Total usagen Full-text usagen User group differencesn Turnaways matter

Usage – what is acceptable

n Who knows?n Vary widely among productsn Usage cannot be the only factor in

decision making process

Usage – what some libraries are doingn Elaborate system of locally-mounted

html pagesn Interactive databasesn Frequencyn Monthlyn At annual report timen At renewal timen Ad-hoc

Usage – what we’re doing

Emerging Standardsn Project COUNTERn Receiving wide acceptancen Growing list of participating publishersn Meant to be a short list of the most

important measuresn COUNTER code of practice

• Release 2 now available in draftn Auditing process to ensure compliancen http://www.projectcounter.org/

Emerging standards

n ARL e-metricsn E-measures included in statistics to be

reported in fall of 2004n Aimed at including e-measures as a

factor used when judging libraries• Not only e-stuff, but also reference

transactions, etc.• http://www.arl.org/stats/newmeas/emetric

s/

Emerging standards

n Other effortsn ICOLC Guidelines

• http://www.library.yale.edu/consortia/2001webstats.htm

n NISO Standard Z39.7• http://www.niso.org

The impact of usagen Usage drive retention decisionn Use of electronic can drive paper

retention decisionsn Wide range of usage observedn Usage cannot be the only factorn Turnaways remain troublesomen Is metering by number of seats a valid

tool?