Library Collections
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Time to Assess Serials Data
It’s that time of year again! Beginning next week Collection Management will begin looking usage and cost data related to our journal subscriptions. Each January and July, Delores McDowell begins the time consuming process of downloading journal usage reports, also known as JR1 COUNTER Reports. (That’s well over 100 JR1 reports.) JR1s, available to us through vendor/publisher websites, provide Collection Management with the number of successful full-text article requests by month and journal title. (Click here for our JR1 report from Nature Publishing Group.) After all the JR1s are downloaded, Brian Craig formats all the spreadsheets identically, then uses an advanced command to consolidate all the reports into one large report. This large report consists of 47,438 journal titles! We have similar data going back through 2008, thus we can analyze use of these resources from 2008-2012. In addition to looking at usage, Tracy Gilmore compiles subscription costs for all these same titles, and then computes cost per use for each title. We then keep an eye out for titles with consistently low usage, or titles with extraordinary high-cost per use coupled by weak usage, and consider cancelling those subscriptions. Of course, we look at several other factors before deciding to stop a subscription, including the size of the department most likely to be using that particular journal. Looking at cost and usage data in this way on a regular basis and making cancellations based on this analysis allows us to free up funds to purchase or subscribe to new content for which there is expressed demand. In addition to looking to the JR1 and cost per use data, Ed Lener and I will be looking at circulation data for all of our print standing orders and making similar subscription decisions.
Other COUNTER reports exist, and we do collect and analyze that data, too, along with other data related to ebook and database usage. But more about that next time.
Until then, feel free to ask us questions or provide any comments you might have on cost and usage analysis.