1. Managing Digital
Collections and User
Expectations
Society for Scholarly Publishing
San Francisco June, 2004
James Mouw
The University of Chicago
mouw@uchicago.edu

2. Topics
n Overview of the UofC Library
collections and users
n Providing access to many products
n Access mechanisms
n Backroom issues
n What suppliers can do to help
n Measuring usage
n The impact of usage

3. The landscape
n ~12,500 FTE
n ~$15,000,000 for materials
n ~$2,000,000 for electronic resources
• Does not include some multiple-format
purchases

4. Budget Categories
$16,000,000.00
$14,000,000.00
$12,000,000.00
$10,000,000.00 Electronic
$8,000,000.00 Serials
$6,000,000.00 Total
$4,000,000.00
$2,000,000.00
$0.00
/00
/02
/93
/99
/01
/04
/90
/96
/03
99
01
92
98
00
03
89
95
02

5. The landscape
n Increasing reliance on electronic
access
n Actively canceling print to afford
continued access when we cannot
continue both
n Increasing number of titles available
electronically

6. Proportion electronic
Total Electronic Percent
Serials Full-text
1998 38,500 5,700 15%
2002 41,000 20,000 48%
2004 42,417 37,000 87%

7. The landscape
n Much attention paid to increasing
access
n OpenURL technology
n Federated searching
n Citation software
n Viewed as a collection expense
n Much attention paid to statistics

8. The landscape
n Linking is “mission critical”
n SFX controls 29,963 full-text copies
• 17,581 unique titles
n Backfiles are purchased and used
n Looking for ways to stabilize ongoing
expenses –even when this means paying
more now
n Purchasing almost no new print titles
when electronic version is available

9. The landscape
n Users always want more
n LibQual study reveals that the only
place we don’t meet “minimal
expectations” is in the area of print and
electronic resources
• http://www.libqual.org/
n Large differences in usage among
products

10. Many (redundant) access
mechanisms required
n Catalog
n E-resource lists
n Various subject pages
n A-Z e-journal listing
n The issues
n Replication of data
n Inconsistency of data
n No single complete source
n Limited resources available
n Linking together various versions of the same
content difficult

11. Many (redundant) access
mechanisms required
n The response
n Various vended products available
n MARC record sets available
n NISO/Editeur joint working party
n ISSN revision underway

12. Many means to an end

13. The catalog approach

14. The e-resources approach

15. The e-resources approach

16. Various subject pages

17. The A-Z journal title
approach

18. The A-Z journal title
approach – appropriate use

19. Major issues we face
n Disentangling all of the above
n Maintaining consistency
n How to help the user select the best
resource
n Maintenance
n Our approach
n Do as much as we can through a single
behind-the-scenes ERM

20. What suppliers can do
n Give us a contact point
n Aim for stability
n Don’t change URL’s
n Announce changes well in advance
n Make renewals easier
n Contact us before an auto-expire kicks
in
n Adopt the concept of “graced issues”

21. Measuring usage
n Why do we care?
n What matters?
n What is acceptable?
n What some libraries are doing
n Emerging standards
n Impact of usage

22. Usage – why we care
n Only measure we have
n Enormous expenditure of resources
– need to justify
n Want to provide the products that
our patrons use
n Beginning to matter for reporting
n Used for continuation decisions

23. Usage – what matters
n Product dependent
n Total usage
n Full-text usage
n User group differences
n Turnaways matter

24. Usage – what is acceptable
n Who knows?
n Vary widely among products
n Usage cannot be the only factor in
decision making process

25. Usage – what some libraries
are doing
n Elaborate system of locally-mounted
html pages
n Interactive databases
n Frequency
n Monthly
n At annual report time
n At renewal time
n Ad-hoc

26. Usage – what we’re doing

27. Emerging Standards
n Project COUNTER
n Receiving wide acceptance
n Growing list of participating publishers
n Meant to be a short list of the most
important measures
n COUNTER code of practice
• Release 2 now available in draft
n Auditing process to ensure compliance
n http://www.projectcounter.org/

28. Emerging standards
n ARL e-metrics
n E-measures included in statistics to be
reported in fall of 2004
n Aimed at including e-measures as a
factor used when judging libraries
• Not only e-stuff, but also reference
transactions, etc.
• http://www.arl.org/stats/newmeas/emetric
s/

29. Emerging standards
n Other efforts
n ICOLC Guidelines
• http://www.library.yale.edu/consortia/2001webstat
s.htm
n NISO Standard Z39.7
• http://www.niso.org

30. The impact of usage
n Usage drive retention decision
n Use of electronic can drive paper
retention decisions
n Wide range of usage observed
n Usage cannot be the only factor
n Turnaways remain troublesome
n Is metering by number of seats a valid
tool?