Predicting Potential Electronic Serials Use

Abstract

When assessing electronic serials, librarians often review usage reports for subscribed serials but know relatively little about the potential use of unsubscribed titles. This paper discusses methods for predicting future use, including examining use of similar materials, citation metrics, interlibrary loan requests, denial/turnaway reports, and failed link resolver requests. Each indicator can tell librarians something different about how users are discovering and attempting to access materials. This paper also shares preliminary data from two case studies that detail an attempt to correlate prior year indicators of demand with first year use data of new electronic serials acquisitions.