Value of the Online Newspaper Collection at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign Library
Kirk Hess and Sarah Hoover
University Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Results
800
Newspaper Article Requests by Vendor, 2012-2013
Issues Read
100000
80000
600
500
400
300
200
100
60000
EbscoHost
Gale
LexisNexis
NewsBank
ProQuest
40000
20000
0
Title Usage by Vendor, 2012-2013
Dec-13
Nov-13
Oct-13
Sep-13
Aug-13
Jul-13
Jun-13
May-13
Apr-13
Mar-13
Feb-13
Jan-13
Dec-12
Nov-12
Oct-12
Sep-12
Aug-12
Jul-12
Jun-12
May-12
Apr-12
Mar-12
0
Jan-12
Successful Full-Text Article Requests
This analysis collected information on utility at the vendor
and title levels for a two-year period from 2012 through
2013 in order to investigate the question of how
University of Illinois users access content from the
electronic newspaper collection.
Utility results revealed that a small number of titles drove
the use for almost each of the vendors. In addition, many
of the most-used titles appear to have been part of data
mining activity, in particular titles from Newsbank Access
World News during 2012.
700
120000
The University Library at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign licenses or owns over 10k current
and historical electronic newspaper titles through five
main vendors—EbscoHost, Gale, LexisNexis, Newsbank,
and ProQuest, including the Library PressDisplay
platform. Yet there are thousands more newspapers
available electronically through these and other vendors,
and we do not have a reliable way to measure the value
of an individual newspaper to our campus.
Conclusions
PressDisplay Total Usage, 2012-2013
Feb-12
Introduction and Research
Questions
Databases included in analysis:
•EbscoHost Newspaper Source
•Gale Academic OneFile, Opposing Viewpoints in
Context, and Biography in Context (newspapers and
newswires)
•LexisNexis Academic (news sources)
•Newsbank—Access World News, Archives of
America, and World Newspaper Archive
•ProQuest (historical newspapers, newspapers, and
newswires)
Several vendors included a large number of titles that
were never used. EbscoHost had the highest percentage
of titles used, but out of a small number of titles.
PressDisplay had the lowest usage for the number of
titles that are included.
The library was able to implement a new set of
newspaper results for its Easy Search discovery tool
based on usage information from this study, including
highlighting popular titles and frequently-used vendors.
PressDisplay 2013
Top 10 Titles out of Total Requests,
2012
PressDisplay 2012
Methods
ProQuest 2013
ProQuest 2012
Utility was measured through reports of full-text article
requests in 2012 and 2013. Most vendors provided
COUNTER JR1 reports, except for LexisNexis, which
provided its own article-level statistics, and PressDisplay,
which is tracked by issues read rather than by article.
Newsbank 2013
San Jose Mercury News (CA)
San Mateo County Times (CA)
Newsbank 2012
The New York Times
Wall Street Journal
Chicago Tribune
Gale 2013
PR Newswire
Chicago Defender
Gale 2012
Business Wire
Washington Post
EbscoHost 2013
Financial Times (London)
All other titles
For title-level information, data on usage for the mostrequested titles was compiled from all of the selected
vendor databases, bringing together separate data points
for print and online versions as well as different coverage
ranges within ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
LexisNexis includes a number of aggregated sets of titles
in its data reporting. Many of our most-used newspaper
titles are also included as part of these sets, but there is
no specific usage information available for individual titles
within the set. For example, the New York Times, the
Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times are
included in the 500+ title category “Major World
Publications,” which had over 11,000 article requests in
2012 and over 31,000 in 2013.
EbscoHost 2012
0
2000
4000
Titles with 2 or more requests
6000
Titles with 1 request
8000
10000
Titles with 0 requests
*Source of data for total titles varies by vendor; some title counts post-date the year of usage, thus making the total
number of titles with 0 requests an approximation. An accurate count of total titles was not available for LexisNexis.
Top 10 Titles out of Total Requests,
2013
Most Used Newspaper Titles
Wall Street Journal
New York Times
140000
Chicago Defender
Financial Times (London)
Successful Full-Text Article Requests
For vendor-level information, databases were chosen for
analysis based on their inclusion of sources for news
content; however, some of these databases also include
a large amount of non-news content. LexisNexis, for
example, also has legal and business information, and
the ProQuest and Gale databases analyzed include
scholarly journals and other material types. For Gale and
ProQuest, data was compared with title lists by
publication type to filter results to newspapers and
newswires. For LexisNexis, the most-used non-news
business and legal sources were removed from the
analysis.
Chicago Tribune
120000
PR Newswire
Washington Post
Los Angeles Times
100000
State Journal-Register (Springfield, IL)
Next steps
News-Gazette (Champaign-Urbana, IL)
80000
Our next step is to use this information to develop a
weighted value algorithm to rank titles and aggregators
as a tool for collection development and recommend
acquisition of new content. We plan to use a three-factor
algorithm that combines the usage data collected in this
study with cost information and an assigned value for
quality to each title.
All other titles
60000
40000
20000
0
San Jose
San Jose San Mateo San Mateo
The New
The New Wall Street Wall Street
Mercury
Mercury
County
County
York Times York Times
Journal
Journal
News (CA) News (CA) Times (CA) Times (CA)
2012
2013
2012
2013
2012
2013
2012
2013
ProQuest Historical
ProQuest
NewsBank
LexisNexis
Gale
EbscoHost
33532
128927
10
42
113
83
86748
1
27511
2412
28533
5
1
17655
6964
5
5455
6005
4
1821
81118
Chicago
Tribune
2012
Chicago
Tribune
2013
24543
3259
231
13628
2536
106
PR
Newswire
2012
7589
472
833
67
PR
Newswire
2013
5633
401
52
442
Chicago
Defender
2012
Chicago
Defender
2013
7078
1857
6
17035
305
4
Business
Wire 2012
Business Washington Washington
Wire 2013 Post 2012 Post 2013
6176
7584
455
3180
321
430
51
454
5298
114
358
119
379
Financial
Times
(London,
England)
2012
Financial
Times
(London,
England)
2013
1511
4274
240
270
16537
108
50
382
The study revealed some problems that would need to be
remediated to fully compare online newspaper titles and
collections, such as reconciling the overlap in title lists
between vendors. We also uncovered other variables that
should be evaluated in our factors such as the impact of
discovery and link resolver systems.