RE: Message from Kevin Guthrie, JSTOR's President

[Tom Williams <twilliam@bbl.usouthal.edu>]

Bernie, when we purchase new licenses for e journals, we generally start
out with a very small number(1 to 3).  It usually takes a few months for
our users to catch on anyway, no matter how much PR we do.  Then we
monitor it closely and as we begin to get too many busy signals we call
them and add more users - very easy and fast to do.  They'll generally add
on the extra licenses that same day and bill you.

-- 
Thomas L. Williams, AHIP
Director, Biomedical Libraries and
 Media Production Services
University of South Alabama
College of Medicine
Mobile, Al 36688-0002
tel. (251)460-6885
fax. (251)460-7638
twilliam@bbl.usouthal.edu

On Tue, 17 Dec 2002, Sloan, Bernie wrote:

> I'm wondering if anyone has developed a reliable method for predicting the
> number of simultaneous users one might need to license for a given
> database. (I realize that there are all sorts of variables that factor
> into this).
> 
> Ten years ago I was trying to calculate the number of simultaneous users
> needed for 39 libraries to access a database. I made an educated guess
> (which was way too high) and gradually worked my way down to the right
> number (which took several license years). I was just wondering if anyone
> has improved on the "educated guess" method to calculate the initial
> number of simultaneous users.
> 
> Bernie Sloan