Fueled by the pressing need for electronic resource usage statistics, librarians are finding themselves being thrust into the role of hunter-gatherer. This article discusses the work done at University Library at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis to provide usage statistics for all its paid subscriptions for a 3-year period. The…

Database cancellation is one of the most difficult tasks performed by a librarian. This may seem counter-intuitive but, psychologically, it is certainly true. When a librarian or a team of librarians has invested a great deal of time doing research, talking to potential users, and conducting trials before deciding to subscribe to a database, they…

This paper provides an overview of EBSCO's new Usage Consolidation product designed to streamline the harvesting, storage, and analysis of usage statistics from electronic resources. Strengths and weaknesses of the product are discussed as well as an early beta partner's experience. In the current atmosphere of flat or declining budgets, libraries…

The Joint Usage Statistics Portal (JUSP) (jusp.mimas.ac.uk), created by five U.K. libraries in 2009, gives participating libraries a single point of access for electronic journal statistics. It provides its more than 160 participants, including 140+ academic libraries in the United Kingdom, as well as 21 publishers and 3 intermediaries, with…

Reference services in public libraries are changing dramatically. The Internet, online databases, and shrinking budgets are all making it necessary for non-traditional reference staff to become familiar with online reference tools. Recognizing the need for cross-training, Chesapeake Public Library (CPL) developed a program called the Database…

The purpose of this paper is to report the results of a quantitative analysis exploring the interaction and relationship between the online database and electronic journal collections at the J. N. Desmarais Library of Laurentian University. A very strong relationship exists between the number of searches and the size of the online database…

For the August/September 2010 issue of "Library Technology Reports" (LTR) published by the American Library Association Techsource division, the author and her colleague, Rachel A. Fleming-May, focused on use and usage, both of electronic resources and use of libraries in general. In this article, the author discusses a few of the findings from an…

Western Illinois University Libraries has cut online serials subscriptions in the past 2 years. The librarians were guided by the statistics for downloads provided by the publishers of the journals. However, questions were raised by both professors and librarians regarding the exact meaning of the statistics. This caused the electronic resources…

Over the past few years, Texas A&M University (TAMU) has searched for a way to administer its electronic subscriptions as well as the electronic subscriptions shared among the TAMU System. In this article, we address our attempts to implement an effective electronic resource management system (ERMS), both for subscriptions on the main campus and…

This article describes the development of the Virtual Library of Virginia (VIVA). The VIVA statistics-processing system remains a work in progress. Member libraries will benefit from the ability to obtain the actual data from the VIVA site, rather than just the summaries, so a project to make these data available is currently being planned. The…

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…

Usage statistics are an important metric for making decisions on serials. Although the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) Libraries have been collecting usage statistics, the statistics had not frequently been used to make decisions and had not been included in collection development policy. After undergoing a collection assessment, the…

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…

Libraries are moving toward electronic resource management systems (ERMSs) to track their usage statistics, but these can be expensive to purchase and maintain. For some libraries, an ERMS can be cost-prohibitive, but they still need to justify the renewal of databases and e-journals to their budget officers or determine which e-resources should…