Library Economic Metrics: Examples of the Comparison of Electronic and Print Journal Collections and Collection Services

This article deals with a framework of library economic metrics including service input and output, performance, usage, effectiveness, outcomes, impact, and cost and benefit comparisons. Examples of these measures are given for comparison of library electronic and print collections and collection services based on a recent cost finding study at Drexel University where the library has converted almost entirely to an electronic journal collection. These data are complemented with recent readership surveys of scientists at Drexel University, University of Tennessee, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and members of the American Astronomical Society which describe changing information-seeking patterns and use of library electronic and print collections. Background The introduction of the World Wide Web, electronic publishing, and digital library initiatives has had profound and continuing impact on libraries of all types. The emerging technologies have caused libraries, their funders, and their users to rethink what libraries are and how libraries can best serve their constituents. Sentiments have ranged from the extreme opinions that libraries will no longer be necessary, to explanations as to why the Web is not a library and that the new technologies will actually strengthDonald W. King, Research Professor, University of Pittsburgh, School of Information Sciences, 135 N. Bellefield Ave., 600, Pittsburgh, PA 15260 Peter B. Boyce, Past Executive Officer, American Astronomical Society, 33 York St., Nantucket, MA 02554 Carol Hansen Montgomery, Dean of Libraries, Drexel University, 33rd and Market Sts., Philadelphia, PA 19104 Carol Tenopir, Professor, The School of Information Sciences, University of Tennessee, 1345 Circle Park Drive, Room 451, Knoxville, TN 37996–0341 377 king et al./library economic metrics en the role of librarians and other information professionals (e.g., Griffiths, 1998). Regardless of how this scenario will play out, it is clear that we must stay on top of these changing events by clearly understanding their economic implications. This article addresses some economic metrics that can continue to shed light on the evolution of educational, research, and professional communication systems. While these economic metrics have been demonstrated for the scholarly journal system and its participants such as authors, readers, publishers, libraries, and other intermediaries (Tenopir & King, 2000), the focus of this article will be on comparisons of library electronic and print journal collections and collection services. This aspect of the system is particularly important because of the steady shift to electronic collections and the resulting difficult decisions that must be made by librarians in an increasingly complex economic environment. Librarians continually face the need to make decisions on the selection, acquisition, access, and service policies and procedures related to electronic publications and to negotiate legal and financial arrangements with publishers, consortia, aggregators, and so on (King & Xu, 2003). More specifically, they need to decide whether or not: • to rely exclusively on electronic journals or purchase both electronic and print subscriptions and, if so, at what price; • to subscribe to or rely on single article demand for certain journals; • to discard print issues or rely on them as a backup for archival purposes; • to negotiate site licenses; • to deal directly with publishers or rely on intermediary services such as consortia, aggregators, gateways, etc., and if so, at what price; • to depend, in some cases, on information freely accessible on the Web as a substitute for costly electronic resources. These complex decisions require a sound economic underpinning as well as good judgment in applying economic information and metrics. Griffiths (2002) has briefly described the evolution of library performance measurement over the past thirty-five years starting with the Morse (1968) pioneering adaptation of operations research analysis to library performance. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Public Library Association, Association of Research Libraries, Council on Library Resources, National Science Foundation, and others sponsored a series of studies in the U.S. to develop library economic metrics, methods, and models for decisionmaking and planning (e.g., Baumol & Marcus, 1973; deProspo et al., 1973; Hamburg et al., 1974; Clark ,1976; Palmour et al., 1980; Zweizig & Rodger, 1982; D’Elia & Walsh, 1983; Buckland, 1983; Kantor, 1984; Cummings, 1986; McClure et al., 1987; Van House et al., 1987). Also during this period, Lancaster (1977, 1993) produced books on the evaluation of libraries. More recently, McClure and colleagues (e.g., McClure & Lopata, 1996; Shim et 378 library trends/winter 2003 al., 2001) have focused on measures for library networked services and electronic collections. The economic framework used in the comparison of library electronic and print collections and services in this article has evolved over thirty some years as a result of what was learned from hundreds of studies. The genesis of the framework was first published in 1971 as a result of a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded study (King & Bryant, 1971; King & Lancaster, 1969) and a similar approach that was being developed in the UK as well (Griffiths, 1977). Many of the studies performed by King Research in the 1970s were founded on this initial framework, including a range of applications such as information retrieval systems (e.g., King et al., 1972), scholarly publishing (e.g., King, et al., 1981), federal clearinghouses (e.g., McDonald et al., 1981), and scientific communication (e.g., King et al., 1976), among others. In the late 1970s, Vernon Eugene Palmour joined the staff of King Research and began to build on the framework (King & Palmour, 1974) with specific applications in the public library community (e.g., Palmour et al., 1980 a,b). In the early 1980s, some of the staff that was concerned with public library studies (i.e., Rodger, Van House, Zweizig) moved on and through the years developed one particular approach to library planning and economic assessment. This has led to recent studies of the electronic journals in libraries mentioned above. Meanwhile, the King Research staff took another approach to economic analysis of libraries, which evolved to the most recent version of the framework used in this paper. This economic analysis mostly involves numerous studies of special libraries (e.g., Griffiths & King, 1993), public libraries (e.g., Griffiths & King, 1989), library networks and consortia (e.g., Griffiths & King, 1991), studies of a few academic libraries (e.g., Griffiths & King, 1989; Montgomery & King, 2002; King & Montgomery, 2002). A Framework and Definition of Library Economic Metrics One premise of the framework is that metrics are designed to serve the perspectives of library staff and management, library users, the funders of the library, and the higher-order community served by the library. A second aspect of the economic framework is that it is applicable to the entire library, general library functions, specific services, or resources used to perform the services. The framework is described in well-established economic terms such as inputs, outputs, performance, effectiveness, usage and demand, cost-benefit, and so on. It first defines five specific metrics and then derives relationships among these metrics. A schema depicting the framework of metrics is given in Figure 1. In this framework, one set of metrics involves inputs which include the amount of resources used to perform a service or provide a product where such resources can include staff, equipment, systems, facilities, a library collection, 379 king et al./library economic metrics and so on. The input resources are often measured in the common measurement unit of dollars. There are also attributes of the input resources that can be measured or characterized. For example, staff attributes include level of education and experience or other indicators of competence. Collection attributes might include comprehensiveness, type of materials, age, and medium (i.e., print, electronic, microform). Outputs include the amount of services provided or number of items produced such as number of items MEASUREMENT PERSPECTIVES SPECIFIC METRICS DERIVED METRICS