Usage Statistics for Collection Assessment and Decision Making

Arizona State University (ASU), being the largest public university in the United States, has a very extensive collection of e-resources. The library consistently receives a large number of requests to add new e-resources to its collection. At the same time, the library is experiencing a downward pressure on its collection budget due to the current recession in general and in the State of Arizona in particular. This has resulted in an increase in the evaluation and monitoring of the use of e-resources. Although the process of collecting and disseminating usage statistics is a very time consuming, tedious, and challenging, overall usage statistics are very critical and extremely helpful in taking important collection management decisions in a timely manner.

This paper illustrates a home-grown online A-Z usage statistics web site at the ASU Libraries and how usage reports are gathered/generated, stored, and made accessible to decision makers. The usage reports are for most of the licensed resources and are updated regularly. The web site displays an A-Z list of e-resources composed of a mix of provider names, packages, and titles and several consolidated reports. The available reports are from year 2004 to present time. For the librarians, the web site along with other criteria serves as a valuable tool for analyzing the library collection. This paper will also highlight the use of this assessment tool, discuss the challenges encountered in developing the usage web site and the future plans for streamlining the process of data collection and availability.