Measurement of use and impact of electronic information services

Dr Angela ConyersEvidence Base

Birmingham City Universityangela.conyers@bcu.ac.uk

NESLi2 deals

UK national deals negotiated by JISC Collections on behalf of the higher and further education communities

• 17 major scholarly publishers

• Libraries decide which deals to take up

Evidence Base

• NESLi2 study for JISC Collections 2004-5• Evidence Base Publisher Deal Project 2006-9• Low and non take up of NESLi2 deals for JISC

Collections 2007• Assessing the value of the NESLi2 deals 2008• Evidence Base individual library consultancy

projects • JISC Journal Usage Statistics Portal (JUSP)

NESLi2 Study for JISC Collections

• 4 NESLi2 publishers

• 17 university libraries

• Robust methodology developed

• NESLi2 deals generally favourable -challenged some preconceptions!

(http://www.ebase.bcu.ac.uk/docs/jiscnesli2summaryeb.pdf)

Evidence Base Publisher Deal Project

• 20 university libraries

• 10 NESLi2 publishers

• Templates for detailed analysis including: Usage range, price band, subject category,

subscribed and unsubscribed titles, trends over time, cost metrics….

Evidence Base Publisher Deal Project

• Have greatly enjoyed being a part of this project, I have learnt so much and gained much confidence in report generating and presenting this to senior staff

• We have found the project interesting and have enjoyed participating. It has certainly provided us with some new techniques to employ when conducting our own value for money analysis.

Low and non take up of NESLi2 Deals

Survey of 121 university libraries

Three key reasons for low take up:

• not good value for money • deal not appropriate to our users• offers too complicated and time-consuming to

work out

Assessing the value of the NESLi2 deals

A guide to help libraries, especially smaller libraries, assess value before purchase and when deciding on renewal.

http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/Reports/Assessing-the-value-of-NESLi2/

What are we doing this for?

Financial data

• to inform purchasing decisions

• to demonstrate that the deal offers good value for money

Usage statistics

• to inform renewal decisions

• to demonstrate how the deal is being used

2750 journals

for the price of ????

Yield Method

Yield provides a measure of the price per £ of acquiring additional unsubscribed titles

Yield per £ = list price of unsubscribed titles

e-access fee

Calculating Yield

Three figures needed:• Costs of maintaining existing subscriptions:

base price or content fee (the ‘subscribed titles’ cost)

• Costs of e-access to all other titles in the deal (the ‘unsubscribed titles’ cost)

• Cost of buying all the titles in the deal on the open market

Working out the yield

Publisher deal X – 1,000 titles with a total list price of £250,000. E access fee £10,000 including VAT

Library A – 100 subscribed titles at cost of £25,000

Yield per £ = £225,000 (£250,000 - £25,000)

£10,000

= £22.50 For each £ of the e-access fee, the Library gets £22.50

worth of journals.

Cost per titleDeal with 1,000 titles

Type of Library Number of subscribed titles

Total cost (subscribed titles plus e-access fee)

Cost per title (n=1000)

Large 100 £22,000 £22

Medium 50 £11,000 £11

Small 10 £4,200 £4.20

Average cost per request

Type of library Average cost per request

Average cost per request for unsubscribed titles

Average cost per request for subscribed titles

Large £0.74 £0.13 £1.48

Medium £0.81 £0.37 £1.62

Medium £1.13 £0.51 £1.54

Small £0.30 £0.09 £0.94

Usage: subscribed and non-subscribed titles

50-75% of total requests have sometimes come from titles available in the deal to which the libraries did not previously have access

Looking at nil usage 1

Type of library

No. of titles with nil use – incl. % No.of priced titles with nil use-incl %

Large 431 19% 64 4% Large 340 15% 27 1% Large 312 14% 44 2% Medium 464 21% 77 3% Medium 609 27% 148 7% Medium 531 24% 123 6% Small 952 43% 493 22% Small 623 37% 567 37% Small 764 40% 567 26%

Looking at nil usage 2

Type of library

No. of titles with nil use – incl. % No.of priced titles with nil use-incl %

Large 106 20% 62 16% Large 111 21% 67 17% Large 94 17% 38 9% Medium 137 25% 61 15% Medium 82 18% 39 11% Medium 115 22% 65 16%

Library comments

• Bundled deals are value for money – nil use is negligible; particularly when ‘unpriced’ titles are removed from the equation

• Value for money: Cost/download ratio highlighted return on investment

• Figures show substantial & sustained annual growth in usage

Adding extra data

To measure the full value and impact of a deal, the following data needs to be combined with usage statistics:

• List prices

• Subscribed titles

• Subject categories

Thank you

Angela Conyersangela.conyers@bcu.ac.uk