Hi Marilyn,

I cannot give you a magic number, but I can tell you what our numbers are like. With journals, cost per download is actually a pretty good measure, so I get good numbers from our journal packages. I use annual usage against subscription price and find that my JSTOR and Project Muse packages are around $1 per download. Other similar packages run as high as $5. My social science journals run up to $10, and only my STM journals exceed $10. I know a colleague who sets $20 as the maximum for her renewals.

With databases, the only consistent measure I can get for all of them is searches, so I compute cost per search, but the figures come out all crazy amounts, so I don't report them out, but I do look at them, and the ones I believe to be well-used and economically priced do tend to come out under 30 cents per search.

Your figures may be totally different, of course.

Good luck,

Judith

Judith E. Stokes

Associate Professor

Electronic Resources/Serials Librarian

Rhode Island College

600 Mount Pleasant Avenue

Providence, RI 02908-1991

401.456.8165

-----Original Message-----

From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum [mailto:SERIALST@list.uvm.edu] On Behalf Of Geller, Marilyn

Sent: Friday, May 07, 2010 7:41 AM

To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU

Subject: [SERIALST] Database return on investment

I'm hoping other continuing resources people can help me answer this

question: What is a good return on investment?  Or what's a "good" cost

per use?

I'm not asking how to get these numbers; rather I'm wondering what these

numbers mean once you have them.  I recognize that there are a dozen

reasons for paying for some databases no matter what the cost per use

is.  And I recognize that cost per use doesn't necessarily mean that a

database was used "well".  I also recognize that "use" can have a

variety of meanings. 

But right now, I need to be able to say simply how much certain

databases cost per each use and whether that's a good indicator or a bad

one.  Does anyone have that magic (possibly meaningless!) number?

Thanks,

Marilyn Geller

Collection Management Librarian

Lesley University Library

29 Everett Street

Cambridge, MA 02138

Email: mgeller@lesley.edu

Phone: 617-349-8859