Examining and Predicting the University of Wisconsin’s System Library eBook Usage

The objective of this capstone project is to help the University of Wisconsin System Library Program make better use of their eBook data to improve decision-making regarding the Library Program’s eBook collection. The eBook vendors ProQuest and Wiley were the focus of this project. Counter statistics reports for these two vendors were collected for the years 2014 through 2018 from all thirteen University of Wisconsin campuses where available. This project’s main objective is to explore areas of interest for the Library Program regarding eBooks including owned or one-time purchase eBook usage compared to usage of eBooks through subscription, eBook usage by campus, and eBook usage by subject areas. Another goal was to provide the library with tools and information to make better decision regarding new additions to the eBook collection in the future. This includes designing a rough predictive model to predict usage of a potential eBook collection title based on features such as, publication year, subject area, ownership (owned or subscribed), and campus.