1. Implementing a Process for Tracking Usage of Unbound Journals
Team Members
Donald Nagolski, MLS
Janet Behnke
Christiana Carlton
Emma Muzzall

2. Opportunity Statement
An opportunity exists to implement a process to
achieve a better sense of which unbound
journals are being utilized in the Health Sciences
Library. By having this process in place, the
Journal Selection Committee is better able to
make informed choices of our unbound journal
usage. With increasing journal costs, it is
imperative to have this data to more easily determine which journals are being used by staff, faculty and students.

3. Goal: To enhance efficiency for the
Journal Selection Committee
to better respond to users’ needs.

4. Most Likely Causes for Current Opportunity
There was a need identified for:
A system or process to record individual title usage
Because of this inability to access unbound
journal usage, decision-making was
limited.

5. Solutions implemented:
Creation of a file of titles and barcodes by Serials department
Database created for data analysis
PDA utilized for scanning barcodes and downloading data
Circulation staff scans barcodes of unbound journals prior to reshelving to track usage
Serials department uploads data into Voyager system and items are discharged

6. Conclusions and Next Steps:
Improvements noted:
Staff awareness of the value of keeping
accurate and timely data for analyses of
tracking the journal usage.
Next Steps:
Continuing to track the usage of unbound
journals to be able to make more informed
decisions of journal subscriptions.