What I
think is most important
in these models that people are proposing is that they are defensible
to the
user base – faculty or researchers, whomever – that you used a fair
consistent technique to determine cancellations or withdrawals. We
often work with
people who are data driven and when you can provide the data, it
enhances your
case. As Danny says, you may have to adjust your threshold as you face
cuts;
you may have to rely on unreliable aggregators (not because they are
unreliable
but the publisher may pull their content at their whim). Also,
critical, is to
recognize that there can be no sacred cows.
A beauty
of the online world is
that they can’t say, but I reshelve the journal when I’m through
with it. The downloads and searches and sessions are what they are
(however the publisher might count them).
The $30
came from an ARL study
(years ago) that evaluated the cost to provide an ILL from ARL
libraries. It
was $11 for the borrowing library and $19 for the lending library. Each
of our
costs may be less (I hope) or more, but it’s a standard that can be
used. Other things to keep in mind that when we determine cost per use
we
don’t include the costs of owning the title – check-in, strips,
shelving, reshelving and storage space while we do include all of the
personnel
and materials costs in the ILL costs. For those of you who are working
with
print content and use, a study was done also years ago, that determined
that
for every counted use there were 1.5 unaccounted uses. If you want to
add that
as a weighting factor for use.
Linda
Linda
Hulbert, Associate Director
Collection Management and Services
O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library #5004
University of Saint Thomas
2115 Summit Avenue
St. Paul, MN 55105
Phone:
(651)
962-5016 Fax: (651)
962-5486 email: lahulbert@stthomas.edu
The
journal article you find is the journal article you were
looking for
Linda
points out the importance of taking into consideration the
discipline, and I would like to suggest another consideration, which is
how
aggressive you want or need to be in managing subscriptions.
Since
we are a independent biomedical research institution, where
immediate online access is highly prized by our scientists, I try to
take a
conservative approach to managing a very expensive subscription list
based on
cost/use data. We have heavily used journal subscriptions that are
core
to our basic research mission that cost as much as $13,000. In our
case,
a $30.00 threshold would be unacceptable.
I’ve
just finished a review of our 280 mostly basic
medical sciences subscriptions list. I used the Counter full text
downloads for 2007 & 2008 (annualized), and the 2008 prices to
calculate
the cost/use for each title, then I determined the average (Mean)
cost/use for
the list and set a threshold for possible cancellation at the Mean + 1
Standard
Deviation from the mean. In our case that puts the threshold at $72 +
$108 = $180/use.
So
that’s my formula.
Cheers,
Danny
=======================
Daniel
H. Jones, M.L.S., Director
Preston G. Northrup Memorial Library
Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research
Shipping address:
7620 NW Loop 410
San Antonio, TX 78227-5301
Mailing address:
P.O. Box 760549
San Antonio, TX 78245-0549
Tel: 210-258-9426
Fax: 210-670-3313
Email: djones@sfbr.org
=======================
I also
use the $30 as a general
rule of thumb – but I also look at a discipline like all of social
sciences and see what the average cost per use is for that area and
when
evaluating the suggestions for cancellation I use anything over the
average
cost per use. We use Counter statistics and do it based on downloads.
Linda
Linda
Hulbert, Associate Director
Collection Management and Services
O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library #5004
University of Saint Thomas
2115 Summit Avenue
St. Paul, MN 55105
Phone:
(651)
962-5016 Fax: (651) 962-5486
email: lahulbert@stthomas.edu
The
journal article you find is the journal article you were
looking for
Does anyone have a formula for deciding their
maximum
acceptable cost per use of a journal? What I’m really wondering, is how
much is too much? It’s easy to justify cancelling print when the cost
per
use of a print journal is, say, $250 per use. But what about a journal
that
costs $20.47, cancel it or not?
Clearly there are many other criteria that play
into such a
decision (e.g. shelf space, curriculum support, accreditation
requirements,
etc.). I’m just wondering how (if) the collective wisdom of this
list use cost per use data.
Thanks,
Sarah
Sarah
Sutton
Serials
/ Electronic Resources Librarian
Mary
& Jeff Bell Library
Texas
A&M University-Corpus Christi
6300
Ocean Drive
Corpus
Christi, TX 78412-5702
phone
361-825-2355
fax
361-825-5973
email
sarah.sutton@tamucc.edu