BC Library Conference 2019

Like many others, the UFV Library has been harvesting journal usage data for several years, and each year we summarize this data to provide information on how much our research databases and journal collections are used, mostly to inform decisions around cuts to our list of licensed e-resources.

A colleague and I started imagining how we could make this data more meaningful, to both internal and external audiences. We wondered if this data could answer some of our more nagging questions, such as:

1) How could we allocate our collections budget by program, rather than format? We have a lot of this data for our print collections, but we currently have no system that provides the same kind of data for our licensed e-resources.

2) How much overlap is there between various databases and journal packages? We know that many of our journal titles can be accessed in two or more of our licensed products... is this an opportunity to remove some of the duplication and at the same time experience savings that can be used to purchase more unique resources?

3) Are top-ranked journals used more or less than other journals? Currently we provide information about holdings for top-ranked journals in a discipline when we complete collection analyses for academic program reviews and new program proposals, but could adding usage data provide even more meaningful information? And could we use this data to engage faculty in a discussion about student journal use?

Using lists of journals by subject culled from vendor web sites, cost data from our acquisitions unit, usage data harvested from COUNTER reports, and common software tools (Excel, Tableau), we set about finding answers to our questions. In this session, I will discuss what we learned and how we were able to make the data more meaningful.