Electronic Resources In Academic Libraries Research Articles

The management and the usage of electronic resources in academic libraries: A bi-directional relationship

Electronic resources (ERs) in academic libraries have become a global phenomenon due to technological developments, and these resources are changing the expectations of library users as well as the nature of the work of librarians. Although there is an extensive body of literature on the management and usage of ERs in academic institutions, few researchers have taken a holistic view by studying both concepts in a single study to reveal how they are related. Previous studies have investigated only the management or usage of ERs as separate concepts. This study investigates the management and usage of ERs in academic libraries in Ghana to explore the connection between the two concepts. The aim is to provide better recommendations for practice. This research applied a mixed methods design. Twenty-four library staff and three library consortium executives were interviewed. Faculty members and postgraduate students from four institutions were surveyed. Our findings show the various ways in which the management and usage of ERs have an influence on each other. These were mainly in the areas of selection, access provision, publicity, training, evaluation, and usage of ERs. The importance of appropriate and adequate resourcing, the marketing and demonstration of the value of ERs, training and usage evaluation are discussed.

Book Review: Reengineering the Library: Issues in Electronic Resources Management

The increasing prevalence of electronic resources in academic libraries has forced information professionals to rethink many aspects of library services. The last couple of decades have seen significant updates to national standards of practice and librarian core competencies. This book presents a well-rounded view of the current state of electronic resources management in academic libraries, with chapters covering a wide variety of topics, including discovery, analytics, vendor relations, and departmental reorganization. Even if managing electronic resources is not one of your primary job duties, this book can provide valuable insight into an ever-growing field of librarianship that impacts library service at all levels.

Book Review: Licensing Electronic Resources in Academic Libraries: A Practical Handbook

Within overall collections budgets in many academic libraries, electronic resources account for 75 percent to 90 percent of the entire budget. Given this financial commitment, there is a clear value to having a robust practitioner-directed literature for electronic resource management. Such a literature exists, and the authors of this volume seek to differentiate themselves by emphasizing the licensing process as a critical component of electronic resource management. The partnership of a librarian (Halaychik) with a legal and procurement expert (Reagan) does afford readers with a holistic institutional overview of the licensing process.

Book Review: Licensing Electronic Resources in Academic Libraries: A Practical Handbook

The proliferation of electronic resources (e-resources) arguably brings several benefits to libraries, including instant, from-anywhere access for patrons and automated workflows for technical services that are potentially more efficient. However, it also brings new challenges. One of these challenges is licensing the many e-resources offered through the contemporary library. Halaychik and Reagan address this challenge in Licensing Electronic Resources in Academic Libraries: A Practical Handbook. This resource primarily covers three license-related topics in five chapters. Chapters 1 and 3 discuss the basics of licensing and licensing law. Chapters 2 and 4 address the licensing process through the full life cycle of licenses. The final chapter discusses negotiating licenses.

Big picture in statistical frame – a statistical analysis and data visualization project of price change for electronic resources in academic libraries

PurposeThe purposes of this paper are as follows: first analyze and visualize the price-changing pattern of common electronic resources; second, provide predictions for future price changes at the vendor level; third, discover any potential cause of such price changes; and fourth assess the practice of skills and techniques used for statistical analysis and data visualization.Design/methodology/approachStatistical analysis and data visualization of library’s expenditure data were conducted using business intelligence tools, in this case, Microsoft Excel and IBM SPSS.FindingsThis study reports the price changes of electronic resources over the past few years, as well as future prediction until 2018.Originality/valueOverall, this research combines statistics analysis and data visualization to unveil current price-changing trends of E-resources, provides price prediction of near future and offers unique, while valuable, reference for future evidence-based acquisition decisions.

Strategic Marketing of Electronic Resources in Academic Libraries in Kenya

Universities in Kenya have subscribed to a range of electronic books and electronic journals through the Kenya Libraries and Information Services Consortium (KLISC). The lack of an effective marketing strategy has been identified as one of the major barriers to their utilization. This paper presents the results of a survey study on the application of a strategic approach in the marketing of electronic resources, or e-resources. The study also sought insights into academic librarians' understanding of marketing principles and the challenges they face in carrying out marketing activities. A questionnaire created using Google Forms was used to gather data. Respondents were recruited by email from institutions that belong to KLISC, and a total of twenty-nine members responded. The responses gathered reveal that although academic librarians are carrying out some marketing activities, the majority of them are not applying a strategic marketing approach.

The use of electronic resources by undergraduate students at the University of Venda, South Africa

PurposeThis paper aims to establish the level of use of the electronic resources at the University of Venda, which is one of the previously disadvantaged universities in South Africa. It identifies the different electronic resources used at the university, determines the level of awareness and training in the use of these resources and suggests ways in which electronic resources may be enhanced. The rapid changes in the information and communication technology (ICTs) have influenced service delivery in academic libraries in terms of how information is gathered, accessed, retrieved and used. Hence, electronic resources are invaluable research tools in academic libraries in the twenty-first century.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative research methodology was adopted, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with each participant to get in-depth information. The target population was all third-year students registered with the School of Human and Social Sciences at the University of Venda. The third year undergraduate students from this particular school where chosen because statistics revealed that these students where ranked among the top in the use of computers.FindingsThe findings revealed that the level of usage of these resources by undergraduate students is elementary and limited to SABINET and EBSCO host. Undergraduate student’s level of awareness of the different electronic resources is low. They confused electronic resources to Web-based internet sources. It also revealed that the level of awareness and training in the use of these resources is still generic, as training is mostly a once off orientation at the first year.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper focuses on third year undergraduate students who were using computers because the researchers were interested in finding out whether students using computers were also using electronic resources. It excluded other profiles such as age, gender and computer usage behaviour of electronic resources.Practical implicationsAdequate use and knowledge of electronic resources at universities is instrumental towards realisation of the country’s ICT Strategy and the outcome-based education (OBE) model of teaching movement. Suggestions are made to the university, the university library, university librarians and the Library Association of South Africa on how to enhance the use of electronic resources.Originality/valueIt establishes the level of use of electronic resources in one of South African historically disadvantaged universities, a point of contact to other previously South African disadvantaged universities and make suggestions on how electronic resources may be enhanced. It adds to the body of knowledge on the use of electronic resources in academic libraries in South African universities.

Promotion of Electronic Resources in Academic Libraries on a Minimal Budget

ABSTRACTE-resources are now an integral part of the collections in academic libraries. Librarians are under pressure to justify the investment through evidence of usage. Consequently, librarians have realized that they must aggressively market and create awareness. Marketing, however, costs money. In many libraries, the allocation of funds for marketing has been overlooked. Many librarians have created promotional activities at a minimal cost to the library.

A web analytics approach for appraising electronic resources in academic libraries

University libraries provide access to thousands of journals and spend millions of dollars annually on electronic resources. With several commercial entities providing these electronic resources, the result can be silo systems and processes to evaluate cost and usage of these resources, making it difficult to provide meaningful analytics. In this research, we examine a subset of journals from a large research library using a web analytics approach with the goal of developing a framework for the analysis of library subscriptions. This foundational approach is implemented by comparing the impact to the cost, titles, and usage for the subset of journals and by assessing the funding area. Overall, the results highlight the benefit of a web analytics evaluation framework for university libraries and the impact of classifying titles based on the funding area. Furthermore, they show the statistical difference in both use and cost among the various funding areas when ranked by cost, eliminating the outliers of heavily used and highly expensive journals. Future work includes refining this model for a larger scale analysis tying metrics to library organizational objectives and for the creation of an online application to automate this analysis.

A study measuring the performance of electronic resources in academic libraries

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide an input‐output analysis of electronic resources in academic libraries by verifying evaluation indicators and applying them to the digital library environment.Design/methodology/approachThis study measures the performance of electronic resources in academic libraries in Korea. To measure the efficiency of the input‐output ratio, evaluation indicators were divided into inputs and outputs. Inputs refer to the e‐resource use environment as well as the acquisition of e‐resources such as web DB, e‐books, e‐journals, and so on. Outputs quantify the use of each resource.FindingsFirst, the results of this study show that a large share of academic library budgets is spent on e‐resource purchases and e‐resource environment improvement for better use. Second, the measurement shows that web DB subscription, annual e‐resource development, and education for e‐resource exhibit higher efficiency, while e‐resource use, web DB and e‐journal download exhibited relatively high efficiency. Third, when the input‐output ratio is calculated in percentage terms, the efficiency of e‐resources of Korean academic libraries reaches 88.20 per cent.Research limitations/implicationsFirst, to measure performance accurately, results/effectiveness must be included. However, this study focused on quantifiable input and output factors. It is recommended that future research include user satisfaction and learning effects. Second, this study was conducted in a particular country (Korea). So it is advisable to conduct research to compare the results of this study to results in other countries.Originality/valueThis study is the first research to consider the performance of electronic resources in depth. This paper contributes to improving the reliability of library evaluation.

Our Journey from Print to Electronic Resources: An Acquisitions Perspective at a Caribbean Academic Library

This article seeks to add to the body of literature about the provision and management of electronic resources in academic libraries in developing countries. It recognizes the importance of providing increased electronic information to users and describes the efforts of an academic library in the Caribbean to address this need. The role of the Acquisitions and Serials Unit in making this transition possible is explored. Furthermore, an assessment of the progress attained in the transition process is documented, including issues encountered, many of which have not yet been resolved. Future plans for successful development of an increased electronic resources environment have also been proposed.

Are Technical Services Topics Underrepresented in the Contributed Papers at the ACRL National Conferences?

SUMMARY This study tests the hypothesis that the contributed papers at the 12 ACRL national conferences do not cover topics of interest to technical services librarians in proportion to their membership in ACRL. The analysis showed that 14.66% of contributed papers dealt with subjects that were part of the charge of ALCTS, the technical services division in ALA, and its five sections. This percentage dropped to 7.52% with the removal of collection development papers that are also of high interest to many public services librarians. Current overlap statistics indicate that 18.83% of ACRL members also belong to ALCTS–an indication of potential ACRL member interest in technical services topics. An unexpected discovery was that the contributed papers became much more holistic with the arrival of the Internet and electronic resources in academic libraries and, starting with the 1999 Detroit national conference, were much more difficult to categorize into specialized niches. The author speculates that the attendance at the national conferences by a high proportion of librarians from small to mid-size academic libraries discourages papers on technical services topics since technical services librarians are more likely to work in large ARL libraries.

A Heuristic Approach to Selecting Delivery Mechanisms for Electronic Resources in Academic Libraries

This paper provides guidance lo academic librarians lor making cost effective— and appropriate purchase and networking decisions for electronic bibliographic database products. Products on the market have proliferated in type, coverage, implementation method, pricing, and vendor commitment. Analyzing elements of an institution's needs for information and the best way lo offer it is extremely complex and involves many interrelated variables. The authors propose applying the results of Ihis examination of the institutional environment to a few “rules of thumb” as a reliable guide to decision making.