Cost per Use as an Electronic Resources Evaluation Parameter: Can You Use It Under Extraordinary Circumstances?

In 2017, the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) suffered two extraordinary events that substantially affected library services. From March through June 2017 the university was closed due to a student strike that affected daily activities and academic services. In September of the same year, our country was hit by the most powerful hurricane ever recorded in its history, which left the whole island without power and communications infrastructure for many months. In both scenarios, access to electronic resources was seriously affected. Usage reports are important for, among other things, evidencing the use of electronic resources in a certain collection, justifying the allocation of funds, and as criteria for evaluating resources. Cost per use is one of the evaluation parameters used by many academic institutions, including the Library System at the UPR Rio Piedras Campus (UPRRP). However, what happens when there are extraordinary factors that affect the calculation of the cost per use during a period of time? What alternatives exist, if any, to be able to calculate and continue using cost per use as a reliable evaluation parameter? This work in progress proposes the development of a new way of calculating and analyzing the cost per use of the electronic subscriptions of the UPRRP Library System using data that is not influenced by extraordinary events and that may affect the final result. The use of the median instead of the average to calculate the cost per use can be an effective alternative to deal with this problem. The Library System at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus The Library System of UPRRP consists of 21 different libraries and collections that provide services to nine faculties and graduate schools. It serves a population of nearly 14,000 students, 1,300 faculty members and researchers, and 1,600 nonfaculty staff. Even though each library and collection has their own staff and coordinates their services to the public, the Library System handles all tasks regarding administration, budget management, cataloging, acquisitions, preservation, and information systems and technologies management. Due to its status as a public institution, the UPRRP, as well as the other 10 campuses of the University of Puerto Rico, receives the general public and offers them access to information resources, the Internet, and many other services that can be compared to those offered in a public library. There are not enough public libraries in the country, so we daily welcome hundreds of patrons from the nearby communities of Río Piedras and San Juan with different economic, social, and academic backgrounds. The electronic resources collection of the Library System (LS) consists of 134 databases in 59 different platforms or interfaces that cover all the disciplines offered at the UPRRP. It has around 8,000 electronic books and 7,550 individual journal titles. Of these, 1,231 e‐ books and 1,400 journals are not part of any collection or bundle and are single selected and acquired with perpetual rights for the institution. The LS also subscribes to ProQuest Summon and EBSCO Full Text Finder discovery services. Cost per Use at UPRRP and the Year 2017 We couldn’t find in the literature a standard definition of cost per use, only brief instructions on how to calculate it. However, for the purpose of this research I ventured to define it as a quantitative parameter that describes the result of involving the amount of funds invested in a particular resource and the amount of activity related to it. You may calculate cost per use by dividing the cost of the electronic resource (e‐ journal, database, etc.) you are evaluating by its usage during a particular period of time. Usage may be the number of downloads, searches, clicks, full text requests, or any other parameter that your library finds useful to measure. Among its uses and benefits are: