***Forgive my ignorance - how do you ascertain
usage of the electronic collection?
You say your average print issue is reshelved .5
times while it is shelved in Current Periodicals.
How many times is the average electronic issue hit,
and for what period of time are you counting?
Or, how are you comparing usage?

***As for your statement,
        "Of course, "use" may be defined differently
        in the print and electronic realms -- if you
        do an online search that turns up a list of
        300 articles, have you "used" each article?"
***my thought would be that if you do so, you also need
to count every issue on the shelf that was touched/moved/
glanced at to find the one you were looking for.

***This is a fascinating discussion; thank you all.  :-)

Jeanette L. Skwor
Serials Dept.
Cofrin Library
University of Wisconsin - Green Bay
Green Bay, WI 54311-7001
(920) 465-2670

***Rick Anderson said:
Actually, what I said was that the print journals constitute the least-used
20% of our journal collection, not that they account for only 20% of the
use.  But in fact, I would guess that they account for much less than 20% of
the use our journal collection gets.

I base that guess on three facts:

1. Our online journals are used very, very heavily

2. Our print journals are used very, very lightly (a recent usage study of
our print collection indicated that the average journal issue is reshelved
.5 times during its stay in the Current Periodicals area -- that's _.5_, not
5)

3. 80% of the journals we offer are online, while 20% are print (though
there is some overlap between the two categories).

So our situation can be summarized this way: since 80% of the collection is
online and 20% is print, both formats would have to get equal levels of use
in order for print to account for 20% of that use.  Of course, "use" may be
defined differently in the print and electronic realms -- if you do an
online search that turns up a list of 300 articles, have you "used" each
article? -- so interpretations may vary.  What is clear to me is that the
print journal collection in my library is increasingly marginalized, and
that a policy of focusing all of our attention on print while essentially
leaving online to fend for itself is an absurd one.

(snipped for bandwidth)