Analyzing cost-benefit of electronic resources in Central Library of Bu-Ali Sina University of Hamedan

To evaluate the cost–benefit of electronic resources in central library of Bu-Ali Sina University of Hamedan.
This study is an applied research that has been carried out by the documentary and the survey method. Two scientific methods, usage frequency and cost-benefit analysis were used for gathering information. Statistical society of this research included the subscribed electronic resources of central library of Bu-Ali Sina University, covering electronic journals and databases available through servers of Sport Discus, ASME, ASCE, ACS, MathSciNet, Scopus, Emerald, Econlit, Science Direct, ProQuest, Institute of Physics, Oxford university of Press databases in annual period of 2011.
Findings: Findings showed that redundancy of usage counts based on electronic resources indicator SAMA (count of paper download with HTML and PDF formats, count of abstract downloads) in different databases had significant difference.
Among 12 databases, ScienceDirect had highest counts of usage with 91% and Econlit had the lowest usage counts with 0008/0%. Cost-benefit in different databases had also difference with each other’s and delineated that cost-benefit in OUP database was the highest with 2201 rials, and in Econlit database was the lowest with 24795147 rials.