RE: Usage-based pricing, a view

["Hamaker, Chuck" <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>]

Anthony Watkinson mentioned CIBER's intriguing finding that new
universities use more articles on one service than more established one.
And their conjecture its due to the quality of the library.

Instinctively I think the finding is right, the conjecture may not be. The
reasons may be quite various. For instance, we found undergrad students on
our campus requesting ILL articles from Medline searches that were in
languages like Polish, Russian, etc.-- when we checked they didn't read
the languages, had no way to have them translated.-When asked they
indicated they were just trying to get "peer reviewed" articles, since
that is what their teachers told them they had to have, and since it was
indexed in Medline.. etc.

So I wonder if discrimination, the experience to figure out what is most
important, might vary, -who is doing the downloading also might vary
enormously by institution-or even department--and why they are doing it.

On our campus, many undergrad students are serving as assistants to
faculty researchers.  What this means is those doing the basic work of
gathering literature for review would be in a learning mode on identifying
the basic literature for a project.

On other campuses or even in different departments on my campus, that role
might be a graduate student's responsibility.

I guess I'm saying that usage alone is not going to be the only solution.
a large undergrad university, i.e. one that does not or cannot offer
Ph.D's, for example-might have a large use-but the reasons might not be
the same as on research intensive campuses.

The "many  uses" might not be as valuable as fewer uses on other campuses. 

my 2cents worth

Chuck