Measuring the value of e-resources

Libraries are spending increasing proportions of their budgets on e-resources and therefore the need to justify these costs is increasing also. This article examines the different methodologies that can be used to measure the value of e-resources including usage statistics, the cost-per-use metric, impact factors and surveys. The focus of this article is on academic libraries with examples from the IReL Monitoring Group given for illustrative purposes. Methods relevant to public libraries are also provided.