Lies, Damn Lies, and Usage Statistics: What's a Librarian to Do?
Abstract
As Bernard Rous has noted, the appropriate relationship between usage, value, and price for scholarly works has never been satisfactorily defined. Certainly, within libraries, the value of scholarly materials has never been measured purely by usage, but rather by vague 1 notions of perceived value. As financial pressure on library budgets increases, we look to user data for our electronic acquisitions to support our decisions for acquiring (or for not retaining) materials.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Library Collection Development and Digital Resources
Library Science and Information Systems
Information Retrieval and Search Behavior
Publication details
- Pages
- 199–214
- Publication date
- 6 January 2026
- Language
- EN
- Document type
- Book chapter