Journals in the hospital library

Journals in the hospital library are most likely your largest budget expenditure not counting personnel. So what techniques are you using to track how these resources are being used? Do you download usage statistics for e-journals and compare them to the cost? At our institution, I've found that it is easy to work with e-journals and usage statistics to justify purchases, but haven't found an equivalent tool for measuring print journal usage.



Yes, we still have print but the numbers dwindle each year as it becomes a matter of balancing convenience with cost. In the rush to provide instant access to articles, we may be losing focus of an important part of collection development --access to the material down the road. In the safe world of print, once we paid for our journal subscription, the issues arrived, were bound and then shelved in the library for use many years, or decades down the road. Can we say that we've been as careful in selecting e-journals? Even with licenses saying that we have access to the content during the time we subscribed to it, if the publisher changes, I've found that this is phrase becomes meaningless. Now what do you do? You had paid for access, assumed it was archival, and now the access has been removed. Do you even have the time to pursue this? My guess is no and we move on by adjusting our holdings statements to reflect the new reality.

I'd love to hear what others think about these topics! Stay tuned.