Help or hinder? : do electronic bibliographic databases really benefit academic libaries?

Abstract

Academic libraries subscribe to electronic bibliographic databases so that students can access articles from thousands of journals and newspapers. On the surface these databases seem an inexpensive alternative to subscribing to the same number of journal titles and occupy far less physical space in the library. However on the whole, databases are an expensive resource that usually takes up a large percentage of the library's annual budget and often the only way libraries can access key titles is to buy a databases that 'bundles' this title with other obscure titles thereby removing the librarian's power of selection. Students are taught by library staff to search the databases for relevant material using 'keyword searching' however the large number of journal titles they search through may mean that they no longer find articles from the more important journals as opposed to before the databases when previously the most important would be all a library would collect. This research attempts to measure whether they are a cost-effective and useful resource by comparing the patterns of access and particularly specific journal titles accessed between two academic libraries.