Some more specific questions: How do we gauge whether they are being used? How do we determine how they are being used? How do we encourage their use when their content doesn’t integrate well with discovery layers or when they fall outside the traditional article database format that our users are accustomed to? What’s a good use case for keeping or a good argument for cancelling a subscription when prioritizing limited budgets? Are you looking at usage stats, and which ones are meaningful?

I'll be starting discussions on a cluster of resources where we can discuss these questions and ideas. Suggestions and new topics are welcome.

Marci Cohen, Jazz & Popular Music Interest Group Coordinator

I'll start with anecdotes from Boston University. We don't have a lot of research going on in rock or popular music, but we do have a freshman writing class on Albums of the '70s & '80s and an undergraduate music history class for non-majors, Music & Culture, and it looks like that is driving traffic to this resource.

I recently learned that LibGuides statistics allows you to view clickthroughs by asset, including individual databases. If you use LibGuides for your Database A-Z list, you can see stats for an asset from that list in comparison to clickthroughs from individual course of subject guides. I found that we're getting some traffic to RBP from the course guide for the writing class, but most is coming from the A-Z list. Seeing that we had a spike in usage on a single day last month, I confirmed that it hit the day the music library staff met with the Music & Culture class to consult with the students on their research topics. The number of clickthroughs exceeded the number of students I spoke to (1/3 of the class).

Usage is minuscule compared to what I observed for RILM through LibGuide stats. I haven't looked into what usage stats RBP provides, and no one higher up in the organization has pressured us to cancel this.

When I discuss RBP with students, my sales pitch is that it has articles you won't find anywhere else online because it is licensed by the writer rather than by the magazine title. And it has good artist indexing, making it easy to find articles about someone rather than where they are merely mentioned. I easily found reviews of the Stooges' 1969 debut album when conducting thesis research.

Marci Cohen

Assistant Head, Music Library, Mugar Memorial Library, Boston University