Electronic Resource Usage Data: Standards and Possibilities

What to buy and how to justify a purchase is an ongoing challenge for collection development librarians. Serials offer the additional dimension of commitment of money over a period of time. The sums involved are often substantial, ranging from a few hundred dollars per subscription to over a million dollars for some consortial or package deals. Per-title usage information is an essential component that assists in these purchase decisions. The electronic resource environment provides the perfect venue to supply such usage statistics to help librarians build collections that are cost-effective and focused on user needs. For example, as print indexes and abstracts moved to online access, librarians were given large amounts of usage data, either in paper or in electronic form. However, the definitions of the data elements being provided appeared to be unique to each vendor, and the available data elements also varied. For instance, was a “search” at Database A comparable to a “search” on Database B? What exactly was a “search?” With varying data elements and varying definitions, there was no way to compare the use between and among database providers to decide which were providing the access that patrons needed and that which budgets could afford. The explosion of full-text electronic journals with even more vendors and more variations on the theme of “use,” “search,” “retrieval,” “turnaway,” etc., further complicated the ability to use the data to make informed decisions.