Productive Academic Database Enrolment

Abstract

Abstract. University libraries are, more than ever, confronting to allocate their resources in more efficient and productive ways. On the one hand, they try to diversify their options to have rich collections; on the other hand, they challenge the risk of purchasing expensive, repetitive and outdated service, which creates a dilemma. Universities and research institutes in terms of academic database selection are between the poor selection and the inefficient selection. In this study, we try to measure productivity of academic database selection of Turkish universities via statistical parameters, like the number of downloaded papers, the number of academicians, the number of students and so on. The results show that the efficiency varies and the research underlines the importance of productivity through a statistical parameterization of the competitive approach in the selection process. While doing this, we provide a decision support system for the online database selection for academic libraries. Keywords: Strategic competition, Higher Learning, University Ranking, Online Databases, Research Indices, Decision Support System