article on aggregated databases

["Barbara Fister" <fister@gac.edu>]

Apologies for cross-posting

Some of you may be interested in an article about aggregated 
databases and undergraduates that we've just published in the 
July issue of portal: Libraries and the Academy, available to 
many of you through Project Muse. For those who don't have 
access, there's a self-archived copy here - 
http://homepages.gac.edu/~fister/aggregateddatabases.pdf

The short version -

--librarians are very satisfied with these database

--vendors are listening to librarians and are including more 
content.

--from 2005-2006 at 14 undergrad libraries, use declined 10% 
overall.

--in all of those libraries combined, 40% of the full text 
journals included in the database did not have a single article 
downloaded - not one - at any of the libraries; 4% of titles 
accounted for half of the downloads. Of the top ten most 
downloaded publications, only two were scholarly.

--we still have a lot of questions.

Just thought you all might be interested.

Barbara (and Amy Fry and Julie Gilbert, co-authors)