[Eril-l] Is Breaking Up THAT Hard to Do?

Tue Nov 10 06:50:20 PST 2015

Does anyone else use abstract views and/or openurl lookups as a supplement
to ILL requests when looking to find gaps (what Nikki called "opportunity
costs" in an earlier message in this thread)?

I find that both the EBSCO and Proquest standard (non-COUNTER) usage
reports are very valuable for identifying individual titles with high
numbers of citations/abstracts viewed that we don't already have full text
of. And although it's harder to analyze, our openurl system's raw log data
also provides good evidence.

Basically the chain of typical user behavior is:
1. look at the abstract - some evidence of interest
2. click on the link to the openurl server - much greater evidence of
interest
3. fill out the ILL request form available on the openurl server - most
powerful interest

A great many students who are "satisficing" stop after step 1, and more
after step 2, who would have been served well by our having the full text.
>From a budget perspective of course, you may want to consider how great
their need really is if they can't be bothered to fill out the ILL form.
That's a big philosophical debate that folks may or may not want to have
here.

Melissa

On Mon, Nov 9, 2015 at 3:49 PM, Nikki DeMoville <ndemovil at calpoly.edu>
wrote:

> I agree that in general ILL isn't great for predicting future usage,
> partly because the number of requests for any individual journal tends to
> be small and given to fluctuation--we've actually had much better luck with
> judicious use of turnaway data, though in all cases it's best to look at a
> minimum of 2-3 years.  At our undergraduate-masters institution, we often
> see usage spikes that we strongly suspect are attributable to one person's
> capstone project, so we like to look at average usage over time.
>
> That said, there can still be useful information to be found in the ILL
> stats.  In our case we found a handful of titles that were generating a
> disproportionate number of requests (and costing a bundle in copyright
> clearance fees).  Subscriptions to those titles have been a runaway
> success, generating usage numbers many times the number of requests.  I
> would expect such finds to be fairly rare, but it's wise to keep an eye on
> the ILL anyway because it can surface emerging research needs.
>
> Regarding researching ILL vs subscription usage, I imagine it would be
> difficult to compile a large enough data set. Cancelling a big deal
> provides plenty of evidence of subsequent ILL usage (with the caveat that
> retained perpetual access may result in very small amounts inaccessible
> content in the first year), but subscribing to titles en masse based on ILL
> evidence is probably less common.  In our case, we've used a
> back-of-the-envelope estimate that 15% to 25% of subscription will
> translate to ILL, depending on the journal and its primary users, and saw
> roughly the inverse of this when we subscribed to our "frequent flyers."
> That is, where we saw approximately 1 ILL request where there had been 5
> subscription uses, we now saw 5 subscription uses for every 1 ILL request
> we had before for those titles.  However, we cherry-picked the obvious
> winners for subscription and our data set is miniscule, so I'd hesitate to
> extrapolate beyond cases where ILL demand is above average and ongoing.
>
> In terms of turnaway data, we used it to inform purchase of several
> backfile packages and saw that while it was not necessarily predictive of
> usage for any one *individual *title, *in aggregate* turnaways from
> backfile content translated well to usage of that same content once
> subscribed.  In this case, we were able to study a large number of titles
> and multiple years of data.  Backfile usage may also be different from
> frontfile usage.  As turnaway data becomes more available with widespread
> adoption of COUNTER 4, perhaps we'll see more research in this direction.
>
> --
> Nikki DeMoville
> Electronic Resources Coordinator
> Robert E. Kennedy Library
> California Polytechnic State University
> San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
>
> email: ndemovil at calpoly.edu
> ph: 805-756-5780 fax: 805-756-7711
>
> On 11/9/2015 11:10 AM, Harker, Karen wrote:
>
> This article lends credence to my hunch that ILL data has limited validity
> as indicator of future use.  First, you need to look at the age of the
> items requested at the time of the requests – are they requesting older
> articles or the latest articles?  Secondly, you need to examine trends in
> usage over time – has there been a steady direction of the number of
> requests?  Finally, examine the number of individuals making these
> requests.  Do all of the requests for this title come from 1 or 2 people?
>
>
>
> I have not looked in the literature, but it would be interesting to read
> any studies that have attempted to ascertain the correlation of number of
> ILL requests with usage.  The research to answer this question (does the
> number of ILL requests predict unfettered usage of a resource) would
> require methodologies that are rife with potential problems, but it would
> be useful to see if it *could* be answered.
>
>
>
> Karen Harker
>
> Collection Assessment Librarian
>
> 940-565-2688
>
> Libraries are for Use <http://librariesareforuse.wordpress.com/>
>
>
>
> *From:* Eril-l [mailto:eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org
> <eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org>] *On Behalf Of *Steve Oberg
> *Sent:* Monday, November 09, 2015 1:04 PM
> *To:* eril-l at lists.eril-l.org
> *Subject:* Re: [Eril-l] Is Breaking Up THAT Hard to Do?
>
>
>
> To add a bit more to my previous response, and also in response to more
> recent comments regarding use of ILL data….
>
>
>
> One of the things I’ve done is a preliminary literature review on the
> topic of PPV and one of the articles I found interesting was the following
> one:
>
>
>
> Hanson, Michael, and Terese Heidenwolf. 2010. “Making the Right Choices:
> Pay-per-View Use Data and Selection Decisions.”
>
> *College & Research Libraries News* 71 (11): 586–88.
>
>
>
> The authors began their exploration of PPV with the assumption that their
> serials collection development was strong. This was based on careful
> evaluation of subscriptions and faculty involvement in decision-making
> year-to-year, along with a thorough examination of ILL data. Their results,
> however, led them to question their initial assumptions, including the
> validity or relevance of ILL data.
>
>
>
> This was written five years ago and perhaps longitudinal data will be more
> enlightening. But as I mentioned, I found their institution’s experience to
> be interesting.
>
>
>
> The downloadable PowerPoint of the session to which I referred at The
> Charleston Conference will eventually be linked from the conference
> schedule, but you can get it here if you’re interested:
> http://librarylink.wheaton.edu/chs15
>
>
>
> Steve
>
>
>
> Steve Oberg <http://www.wheaton.edu/Academics/Faculty/O/Steve-Oberg>
>
> Assistant Professor of Library Science
>
> Electronic Resources and Serials
>
> Wheaton College (IL)
>
> +1 (630) 752-5852
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
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-- 
Melissa Belvadi
Collections Librarian
University of Prince Edward Island
mbelvadi at upei.ca 902-566-0581
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