Digital resources play an increasingly important role in academic libraries, which must demonstrate their value to the institution and their impact on student learning outcomes in new and more compelling ways. This study examines 5 years of vendor-supplied e-resource usage data in conjunction with other library and institution measures. Results…

In answering the question "What is the next trend in usage statistics in libraries?" an eclectic group of respondents has presented an assortment of possibilities, suggestions, complaints and, of course, questions of their own. Undoubtedly, usage statistics collection, interpretation, and application are areas of growth and increasing complexity…

The University of Westminster began collecting and analyzing vendor usage reports since starting their e-book collections in 2004. They have used the results both to monitor the use of the collections and to calculate basic cost-per-use metrics that have informed decisions on whether to renew particular resources. In 2008, they sought to extend…

Twitter provides rapid information in a short form, and it is extremely easy to follow the updates of others because of myriad software applications with which it works on both mobile devices and traditional computing hardware. Currently, most academic librarians are using Twitter primarily as a tool at library conferences and seminars to capture…

There is a growing interest in making available and making sense of the data on the Web and trapped in databases. Rather than a web of unstructured documents, full of information understandable only to humans, there is a movement whose intention is to make these data structured, reusable, machine-readable, and interrelated. This approach to Web…

Library school courses focusing on management and budgeting are as important as ever, as are continuing education opportunities for librarians who may not have encountered a severe economic recession. The journal crisis of the 1990s is still a fresh and unpleasant memory for many. However, for other librarians who may have graduated from library…

The author recently asked his colleagues, "How can libraries determine the value in collecting, managing, preserving, and/or cataloging e-resources?" hoping to challenge readers to come up with some thoughtful opinions and useful tips. Not surprisingly, he received a handful of substantially different but uniformly provocative and creative…

In this article, the authors compared the MLA International Bibliography database (MLAIB) across five vendor platforms to determine how and why seemingly comparable searches produced varying results. A number of tests were conducted using a variety of fields, terms, and parameters, and examples of results are provided. The authors' findings are…

Electronic resources, the tools we use to manage them, and the needs and expectations of our users are constantly evolving; at the same time, the roles, responsibilities, and workflow of the library staff who manage e-resources are also in flux. Recognizing a need to be more intentional and proactive about how we manage e-resources, the…

The Joint Information Systems Committee National e-Books Observatory Project will assess the impacts, observe behaviors, and develop new models to stimulate the U.K. higher education e-books market. The project has licensed a collection of e-books that are highly relevant to U.K. higher education in four disciplines and will evaluate the use of…

Increasing use of screencast and Flash authoring software within libraries is resulting in "homegrown" library collections of digital learning objects and multimedia presentations. The author explores the use of Google Analytics to track usage statistics for interactive Shockwave Flash (.swf) files, the common file output for screencast and Flash…