In this challenging economic climate, how does the HSLS staff decide which electronic journals, books, and databases to keep in the online collection? Since over 80 percent of the HSLS acquisitions budget is for electronic materials, careful analysis is essential.
One very helpful tool is usage statistics that are provided by the companies from whom we purchase materials. Some are automatically harvested for us on a monthly basis by a Web-based software program that collects usage statistics in a common format (COUNTER) using a standard protocol (SUSHI). These statistics are particularly useful because we can compare usage of journals from different publishers.
We receive a variety of reports each month. One report lists the most highly used journals. Not surprising, the top ten HSLS journals used at Pitt and UPMC in the first eight months of this year are:
1. New England Journal of Medicine
2. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
3. Nature
4. Journal of Immunology
5. Tetrahedron Letters
6. Cancer Research
7. Circulation
8. Journal of Neuroscience
9. Journal of Clinical Oncology
10. The Lancet
We purchase numerous journal packages from individual publishers. Common understanding has been that libraries save money by buying journals in a package rather than selecting titles individually. But is that cost effective? We can analyze our usage statistics to answer that question. For example, we receive a 16 percent discount from one publisher to purchase all 76 titles in their package, even though usage stats show that only 67 of these titles are well-used at Pitt-UPMC. But what if we subscribed individually to those 67 well-used titles? After analysis, we learn that we would pay about the same for the well-used journals (67 titles) as we pay for the entire package (76 titles). So for HSLS, this package gives us access to more journals for a comparable cost.
Another use of statistics is to evaluate a large journal package before renewal. When we did a quick analysis of one publisher package of 500+ journals, we learned that our users indeed requested numerous full-text articles from these titles. Specifically,
- ¼ journals had more than 100 annual requests
- ½ journals had between 50-100 annual requests
- ¼ journals had less than 50 annual requests
These statistics convinced us that Pitt-UPMC users found these journals very useful in their work, so we renewed the package.
For some products it’s most helpful to examine usage over time. For example, for one very popular diagnostic tool, we have usage stats from May 2006 to the present. There has been a gradual increase from 8,000 hits per week to 11,000 hits per week over this time period, indicating that this product is valued by our users.
Though usage statistics are helpful in analyzing our collection, we also pay careful attention to balancing the mix of subject areas to reflect the research and interests of our user population.
~ Leslie Czechowski