5 Ways To Demonstrate Value Using Usage Statistics Jo Alcock CILIP Conference 2015

What do we mean by value?

Importance that stakeholders (funding institutions, politicians, the public, users, staff) attach to libraries and which is related to the perception of actual or potential benefit BS ISO 16439:2014 Methods and procedures for assessing the impact of libraries

What do we mean by usage statistics?

Could include: Use of library resources (e.g. books, journals, electronic resources) Use of library space (e.g. study space, silent areas, group areas, bookable space) Use of library services (e.g. librarian enquiries) Anything else people use!

5 Ways To Demonstrate Value Using Usage Statistics

Make evidence-based collection management decisions 5 Ways To Demonstrate Value Using Usage Statistics

JUSP Journal Usage Statistics Portal

“The library buys many different types of online resources, from many different vendors, and all of these resources need to be continually evaluated and assessed to see if they are returning on the financial investment DMU Library has made in purchasing them for DMU students and staff” usage-cost-analysis-creating-a-template-spreadsheet/

Understand usage of open access publications 5 Ways To Demonstrate Value Using Usage Statistics

IRUS-UK Institutional Repository Usage Statistics

“IRUS-UK provides standards-based usage statistics that can be compared with publisher reports, so that the visibility of open access repository content can be highlighted”

Profile usage to understand broader context 5 Ways To Demonstrate Value Using Usage Statistics

“We were looking at the year on year comparison of usage, and it was interesting to find unexpected trends. We intend to look at the usage profiling reports to see if this is a national trend or something specific to our institution that warrants further investigation.”

“We use IRUS-UK to get data on activity, usage and exposure, for example trends over time to see if downloads are increasing… Benchmarking against other institutions is useful, as it gives us some context about usage trends we see in our own repository.”

8 anonymised institutions

Inform discussions with key stakeholders 5 Ways To Demonstrate Value Using Usage Statistics

“The usage statistics are used to inform important decisions and we really want to be sure we can rely on the accuracy of the data; with JUSP we know we can. We will often present this information to academics and it will be scrutinised so it’s important for us to be sure that the data is reliable”

“We get a lot of requests from academics asking about the downloads of their research, particularly at annual review time. Sometimes departments will request information on how their items are doing”

Provide information to support advocacy 5 Ways To Demonstrate Value Using Usage Statistics

“I normally make the point it is important to be archiving full text and that we attract hundreds and thousands of downloads per year and these are COUNTER-compliant downloads using IRUS-UK”

“The most common use for repository statistics is in presentations - we can use them to show the type of usage, and to demonstrate the usage and broad range of use. For a particular item type we can talk about a news story or blog which can show a spike in downloads that corresponds to the publicity.”

Make evidence-based collection management decisions Understand usage of open access publications Profile usage to understand broader context Inform discussions with key stakeholders Provide information to support advocacy

JUSP IRUS-UK