Re: Question on journal use

[Julie Schneider <jschneider@library.wisc.edu>]

The data you've asked about is something we try and collect on 
our journals at the Ebling Library (health sciences) at the 
University of Wisconsin-Madison. The definition of use that David 
describes is also the same as what is used at Ebling. We value 
those numbers only so far but one hope is that errors are 
consistent across titles and that the scanning of barcodes as the 
journal is reshelved is not biased towards any one title.

With that said, I can tell you that for the year 2005 the print 
usage of our subscription title list at Ebling is 89,361 and the 
online usage (that can be counted) is 1,131,575. I can tell you 
that the online usage is low since there are titles that we can 
not get usage statistics for and they are recorded as zero but 
with an explanatory note. And, as we all know, not all publishers 
are COUNTER compliant so it is very difficult to compare across 
titles. We try and be as consistent as possible. I hope this adds 
just one more tiny piece of info to your search.

Julie Schneider 
Ebling Library University of Wisconsin-Madison

David Goodman wrote:

> There is some information on the use of printed journals. "Use"
> in this case often defined as reshelving count. Volumes used as
> headrests count as uses. The most extensive data that I know
> being from Wisconsin, of which a sample is at
> http://www2.lib.uoguelph.ca/systems/rdaehn/peruse/99SummUsage.pdf.
>
> Data from the period during which OA journals were becoming
> almost universal in science are obviously hard to analyze,
> because one has to know for each journal in each library what was
> available, and for what years.
>
> For journals where both formats are available, rough estimates is
> that online use is 2X to 100X higher. The even rougher estimates
> for the unbound print issues show significant use only for the
> expected JAMA, Nature, etc.
>
> I did a little work on this, but have never published, because
> the print figures were too low to analyze and I feel ashamed for
> not having started before the transition when I could have gotten
> a baseline.
>
> If someone has trustworthy numbers, please let us all know.
>
> Dr. David Goodman
> Associate Professor
> Palmer School of Library and Information Science
> Long Island University
> and formerly
> Princeton University Library
> dgoodman@liu.edu
> dgoodman@princeton.edu