Re: SURVEY: How do you know how many e-titles you own? Mary Williams 30 Apr 2003 16:17 UTC
Rob Withers wrote: > The Technical Services and Collection Management divisions of the Academic > Library Association of Ohio will be holding a workshop on electronic > journals in mid-May. We are interested in providing an overview of what > practices people use to determine how many e-titles they provide access > to. How does your institution do it? Please share your ideas... > > 1a. When asked to estimate the number of serials subscriptions, do you > include electronic titles? Titles which provide articles through > LexisNexis and other databases? In my previous situation we had many ejournals as a result of system purchases. If asked for serial subscriptions, we counted titles ordered through our vendor, which included some online only. We got a report from our vendor on those titles. We did not include any titles in databases as most were citation only and did not present the journal as a whole; that is, it couldn't be easily browsed. > > > 1b. What is the job title/classification of the person who tracks this > information? I was the Periodicals Librarian. (There is currently no one in that position). > > > 2. Do you include links for free serials titles into your catalog? Include > these in the number of e-journals or periodicals to which your library > provides access? I had planned to do so, but it took a back seat to migration. If asked how many ejournals we provided access to, they would have been counted. > > > 3a. Do you track the number of titles available in part or in whole only > through research databases? How do you collect this information? How often > do you update it? Did not attempt to do this. > > > 3b. In the event that only selected articles are available from a > database, do you exclude these titles? include them as if the whole > title were availabe? use a fractional number? Citation database titles were excluded. > > > 3c. What is the position title/classification of the person responsible > for collecting this information? > > 4a. How do you estimate the long-term costs for subscriptions for > individual titles? It never came up. > > 4b. How do you estimate the long-term costs for subscriptions for > titles obtained through aggregators and/or consortial deals? Also never came up. We benefited so greatly from system/consortial packages it was never an issue. > > 4c. How do you estimate the ratio for cost per electronic title over a > multi-year period-- especially if it's through an aggregator? > > 5. If you could wave your magic wand and change something about the ways > in which libraries provide access to e-journals, what is one thing that > you would change to make it easier to gather and present statistics on the > number of e-journal titles, what would it be? I would worry first about providing rational and consistent access and get to the statistics later. Surely there is software that will track use. > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Rob Withers > Assistant to the Dean & University Librarian > Miami University Libraries > Oxford, OH 45056 -- Mary Williams Serials Librarian Olson Library Minot State University 500 University Ave. W Minot, ND 58707 Ph: (701) 858-4285 FAX: (701) 858-3581