Results

Next stepsOur next step is to use this information to develop a weighted value algorithm to rank titles and aggregators as a tool for collection development and recommend acquisition of new content. We plan to use a three-factor algorithm that combines the usage data collected in this study with cost information and an assigned value for quality to each title.

The study revealed some problems that would need to be remediated to fully compare online newspaper titles and collections, such as reconciling the overlap in title lists between vendors. We also uncovered other variables that should be evaluated in our factors such as the impact of discovery and link resolver systems.

Kirk Hess and Sarah HooverUniversity Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Value of the Online Newspaper Collection at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library

Methods

Utility was measured through reports of full-text article requests in 2012 and 2013. Most vendors provided COUNTER JR1 reports, except for LexisNexis, which provided its own article-level statistics, and PressDisplay, which is tracked by issues read rather than by article.

For vendor-level information, databases were chosen for analysis based on their inclusion of sources for news content; however, some of these databases also include a large amount of non-news content. LexisNexis, for example, also has legal and business information, and the ProQuest and Gale databases analyzed include scholarly journals and other material types. For Gale and ProQuest, data was compared with title lists by publication type to filter results to newspapers and newswires. For LexisNexis, the most-used non-news business and legal sources were removed from the analysis.

For title-level information, data on usage for the most-requested titles was compiled from all of the selected vendor databases, bringing together separate data points for print and online versions as well as different coverage ranges within ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

LexisNexis includes a number of aggregated sets of titles in its data reporting. Many of our most-used newspaper titles are also included as part of these sets, but there is no specific usage information available for individual titles within the set. For example, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times are included in the 500+ title category “Major World Publications,” which had over 11,000 article requests in 2012 and over 31,000 in 2013.

Introduction and Research Questions The University Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign licenses or owns over 10k current and historical electronic newspaper titles through five main vendors—EbscoHost, Gale, LexisNexis, Newsbank, and ProQuest, including the Library PressDisplay platform. Yet there are thousands more newspapers available electronically through these and other vendors, and we do not have a reliable way to measure the value of an individual newspaper to our campus.

This analysis collected information on utility at the vendor and title levels for a two-year period from 2012 through 2013 in order to investigate the question of how University of Illinois users access content from the electronic newspaper collection.

 

Conclusions

Utility results revealed that a small number of titles drove the use for almost each of the vendors. In addition, many of the most-used titles appear to have been part of data mining activity, in particular titles from Newsbank Access World News during 2012.

Several vendors included a large number of titles that were never used. EbscoHost had the highest percentage of titles used, but out of a small number of titles. PressDisplay had the lowest usage for the number of titles that are included.

The library was able to implement a new set of newspaper results for its Easy Search discovery tool based on usage information from this study, including highlighting popular titles and frequently-used vendors.

Databases included in analysis:

•EbscoHost Newspaper Source•Gale Academic OneFile, Opposing Viewpoints in Context, and Biography in Context (newspapers and newswires)•LexisNexis Academic (news sources)•Newsbank—Access World News, Archives of America, and World Newspaper Archive•ProQuest (historical newspapers, newspapers, and newswires)

*Source of data for total titles varies by vendor; some title counts post-date the year of usage, thus making the total number of titles with 0 requests an approximation. An accurate count of total titles was not available for LexisNexis.