All Disciplines
Bibliometrics provide important information about journals, but the results do not necessarily (depending on the measurements) represent the value of these resources to the library's institution. One of the best ways to measure the importance of particular journals is to create a database of works that cite and are cited by the institutions' faculty. That can be, however, a very time-intensive proposition. Here are alternative suggestions:
Local Usage Statistics NU's E-Resources Usage Statistics (available to NUL staff only) provide indicators of the importance of a journal to your local constituency.
Sample Local Bibliometrics Take a sampling from the department for which you are responsible: For example, for the Political Science collection one strategy is to collect bibliometic data (works that cite or are cited by) on two faculty from each subfield in the Department. In this case, the total number of authors to trace would be ten—two each from American Politics, Comparative Politics, International Relations, Methods, and Theory—instead of all forty faculty.
Review Citation Analysis Results with Faculty Gather the non-local evaluative data on journals and take it to the faculty to discuss. The aim here is to find out if the results match or approximate the views and perceptions of the faculty. Although it is not always easy to engage faculty in library matters, this is one for which they may be made feel that they have a personal interest in the topic at hand, since libraries cannot possibly subscribe to all of the journals available in any given field.
Interlibrary Loan Check ILL requests for the x number of times, over x years, that articles have been requested from x journal.
List Checkings Check library holdings against the journal titles list in the most important index(es) for the field and/or check library holdings against the bibliographies of two definitive works per subfield. What titles does the library have that do not appear in any of these lists? The results should be interpreted in conjunction with other measurements.