Presentation by Alison Brock from the Open University at the JUSP update and experience exchange workshop on Thursday 13th July 2017

1. Using JUSP eBook data at the
Open University
Alison Brock July 2017

2. Examples of how JUSP eBook
data is used
1. Assessing the value for money of a particular eBook
package, or collection of titles.
2. Selecting new content using turnaways data.
3. Monitoring use of a collection over a number of years.
4. Informing our eBook purchasing strategies.
5. Harvesting eBook data directly into Alma.

3. Assessing value for money
• In 2016 we decided to invest a small amount in the
Institute of Physics (IOP) eBooks Release 1 package.
• At the beginning of this year we wanted to see how it
had been used prior to making any decisions on
investing in the Release 2 package.
• Using JUSP BR2 data we were able to assess the cost
per use of the titles in the collection.

4. Key Performance Indicators
(year):
2016
(FY15/16)
METRICS
Total section requests 344
Mean section requests 29
Section requests per FTE
user 0.0053
£ COSTS
Total resource cost £3,645.60
Cost as % of total budget 0.09
Cost per section request £10.60
Cost per FTE user £0.06

5. Assessing value cont…
• We could see that 21 of the 35 titles purchased had had
sections downloaded.
• The cost per view was relatively high but still significantly
lower that buying the title, or getting an inter-library loan.
• Initial indications are that this is a worthwhile collection
and the decision was made to invest in the Release 2
collection.
• Throughout 2017 we will also use BR3 data to see if
there are any turnaways from the Release 3 collection
we haven’t bought.

6. Selecting new content
• Using JUSP eBook BR3 data we wanted to see if there
were any Wiley eBooks with particularly high turnaways
in 2016.

7. Selecting new content cont…
• The results showed very high turnaways for some titles.
• However on checking some titles they were available
and the turnaways happened during publisher site
downtime in one month.
• Once titles were checked against current availability we
were able to produce a list of 40 titles with true
turnaways.
• These were presented to faculty librarians as a list of
possible one-off purchase to spend end of year money.

8. Monitoring use of a collection
• Although many of our eBook collections tend to be one-
off purchases there are some we take as subscriptions.
• We monitor use of our subscriptions annually and record
details in a resource review report.
• These gather usage data for a number of years into one
place and utilise some cost and use metrics to offer
comparison for use of the resource over time.
• JUSP data is used where available – in this example for
Credo Reference BR2 data has been used.

9. Key Performance Indicators (year): 2012 (FY11/12) 2013 (FY12/13) 2014 (FY13/14) 2015 (FY14/15) 2016 (FY15/16)
METRICS
Total section requests 49260 39823 28998 38955 48445
Mean requests 4105 3319 2417 3246 4037
Requests per FTE user 0.62 0.52 0.41 0.58 0.75
£ COSTS
Total resource cost £7,665.60 £7,894.80 £7,954.80 £8,191.20 £8,436.00
Cost as % of total budget 0.23 0.23 0.22 0.21 0.21
Cost per section request £0.16 £0.20 £0.27 £0.21 £0.17
Cost per FTE user £0.10 £0.10 £0.11 £0.12 £0.13

10. Informing our eBook purchasing
strategies
• We often use JUSP data in reports to the Library
leadership team to help inform our decisions over
purchasing strategies.
• A recent example involved analysis of various titles we
had bought from suppliers using different purchase
models. This was to ascertain the pros and cons of
those methods, whilst also building a case for the
purchase of a large aggregated collection of eBook
titles.

11. Informing strategies cont…
• The kinds of data used from JUSP for this analysis were
BR2 reports. We also had to use BR1 data from some
suppliers.
• We analysed collections by looking at costs per section
request (or title), how many of the titles bought had been
used and how many titles were used in a number of use
ranges.
• It gave us an idea of whether our purchases of older
content had been worthwhile and if evidence based
access or patron driven acquisition were value for
money.

12. Informing strategies cont…
Royal Society of Chemistry 2010 2011 2012 2013
Key performance indicators (BR2)
Total titles purchased 986 1055 1135 1135
Total no. titles accessed 499 301 350 329
Total successful section requests 8959 5396 4940 4396
Mean successful section requests (month) 747 450 412 366
Successful section requests per FTE user 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1
Title with nil use 487 754 785 806
Titles with low use (<10 requests) 251 202 223 234
Titles with medium use (10-100 requests) 237 89 121 87
Titles with high use (>100 requests) 11 10 6 8
Titles with very high use (>1000 requests) 0 0 0 0
Top 20 performing titles as % of total requests 31% 58% 43% 55%
Total package (incl. VAT)
Mean cost per title £26.11
Mean cost per successful section request (aggregate 2010 to 2013) £3.31 £2.06 £1.54 £1.25
Cost per FTE user (FTE in 2013) £0.39

13. Harvesting eBook data into Alma
• Since May 2017 we’ve been using the JUSP Sushi client
to harvest our JUSP eBook usage data into Alma. This
automatically collects the JUSP data for us each month
for our analysis.
• We can now run reports in Alma analytics to look at how
our eBook collections are being used.
• Types of analytics reports we can use are:
–Top 10 eBook titles in the previous calendar year.
–Top 5 used publishers to access eBooks in the
previous calendar year.

14. Harvesting eBook data cont…
• Still early days as only some 2016 and 2017 data are
available but we’re hoping to refine the reports over
2017 to get good reports from the system in early next
year.
• Top 10 titles 2016:

15. Any questions?

16. Alison Brock, eContent Advisor
Library Services
The Open University
Walton Hall
Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA
www.open.ac.uk