UnSub and Small Colleges

[Jen Holman]

Hello -

I've just started using UnSub to review our big deal packages with Elsevier (College Edition), Wiley, Sage, and Springer. So far, my results are far from those I have seen in various conference presentations.

Those presentations, however, have largely come from large institutions. In this example from UnSub:

Lots of titles are concentrated on the low end of the cost/use axis. Our results don't resemble that at all:

and instead have journals scattered throughout the entire cost/use spectrum.

Because of this distribution, and our much lower package costs, we cannot get to 80% fulfillment/access for any one of our packages without exceeding our package costs.

Is this typical for smaller institutions?

Jen Holman

(sorry about having to use my personal email address- our institution doesn't allow Google Groups)

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Jenifer Holman (she, her, hers)                               

Electronic Resources Librarian

Van Wylen Library, Hope College

53 Graves Place

Holland, MI 49423

phone: 616-395-7793

email: hol...@hope.edu

[Scott Chamberlain]

Hi Jen, Good question! 

Building on Heather's post here from last year https://groups.google.com/g/unsub-discuss/c/uAptlm7YVOQ/m/gELVZ9lmCAAJ ...

Because AFAIK most title by title subscription costs are the same regardless of institution size, and downloads/usage numbers will be smaller for smaller schools, then CPU is going to be higher for smaller schools. That is, our CPU calculation is essentially the cost divided by usage; since the base subscription cost stays the same regardless of the school, as usage goes down the CPU goes up.  This is all on average of course, and will really depend on the details of each institution. 

There are some approaches in Unsub you can take if a title by title approach isn't making for good fulfillment and cost numbers.

First, ILL/document delivery can be a particularly attractive option as an alternative to a la carte subscriptions - you can play with the two ILL parameters as described here to see how changing ILL/document delivery request rate and/or cost changes your results. 

Second, if you haven't already, PTA is particularly important to include to get an accurate model. PTA setup is described here.

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Any folks from smaller schools want to share their experience here?

Best, Scott