2014 Charleston Library Conference

In this presentation, I will share the strategies of my university in tackling the major challenges in developing collections during the transition to open access model. In particular, I will present the model developed to evaluate the cost impact of scholarly contents within an open access environment. In this model, three elements are considered in evaluating the value of contents. Besides aggregate usage, the distribution of use is critical to determine the overall value, as is the cost per use derived from COUNTER usage reports. A tipping point was reached where over 50% of new research is made open access either in green and gold OA (European Commission, 2013). The development of a framework to evaluate the cost impact of paid scholarly contents has enabled our library to rationalize our investment in an informed way. Today we face a big challenge of sustainability in a world of open knowledge. In addressing the big challenge, the larger initiatives undertaken at the University of Hong Kong include partnering with publishers to further explore and develop new models of access and acquisitions to support broader research needs, with the aim to bring the broadest possible and most current print, digital and media contents to our users. With cost increases outstripping funding and Libraries unlikely to get more funding, decisions on what contents to buy and retain have to be data-driven or evidence-based driven. The analytics derived from this use study model could be adopted by libraries to rationalize collection building and to increase use and impact of collections. Such use analytics can also benefit publishers and vendors in understanding the pattern of use and finding more sustainable price models.