quantifying electronic access

[Molly Molloy <mmolloy@lib.nmsu.edu>]

I'm not sure if this is the best list to ask this question, but I'll try--

How do libraries count electronic titles that they provide access to? It
is important for us to let the administrative folks know that even though
we may have canceled 700 journal subscriptions, we've used some of the
money to provide fulltext access to lots more titles.

It might be simple if all e-titles were in the online catalog, but ours
are not. We maintain a webpage for e-journal subscriptions, but that is
only a small sample of what we can provide to our users through various
databases that give access to full text journals. We could look at each
database, for example, Proquest Direct, and count the number of fulltext
titles. Of course, the vendor is never very precise about this number
either because it can change so frequently depending on their agreements
with publishers.  And then, we would need to adjust for duplication
between the various databases. The number will grow so rapidly and change
so drastically (this year we added Lexis/Nexis Academic Universe). Does
anybody really know how many fulltext titles are there??

Anyway-- I'd appreciate any feedback on how (or if) others count
electronic access. I'm sure there must be things written on this as well
and I admit that the question just came up and I've not done much research
on it-- So if someone wants to toss a citation out, that's would be
great-- Thanks in advance.

Molly Molloy, Interim Head, Collection Services Department
New Mexico State University Library 
Las Cruces, NM 88003
505-646-6931    mmolloy@lib.nmsu.edu   http://lib.nmsu.edu/staff/mmolloy