DIGITAL SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION IN ESTONIAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES - STATE FINANCING, EXPENDITURE AND USAGE

Scientific information provided by university libraries is to a certain extent the basis for students' research and development, degree of study, and professional specialization. Students' use of online resources is growing rapidly. As a rule, most scientific scholarship available in university libraries today is electronic. Nearly all of the journals of natural and exact sciences, as well as of engineering, have electronic versions and a certain number are available only electronically. Digital scientific information is also strategically important, insofar as it affects the economic and social development of the contemporary world. University libraries have an important place in mediating and preserving such information. For the purposes of this article, a "university library" is defined as an internationally recognized scientific library that supports the demands of its parent institution's current programs of study and research. The definition of the electronic library is still not exact, although it has become a household term in library literature. Several terms are used as synonyms or near-synonyms for this phenomenon, such as "virtual library," "library without walls, "networked library," "desktop library," and "digital library". The definition of an electronic library assumed in this article is an entity that is both a physical university library providing electronic access to a variety of materials of scientific information and a virtual provider of access to electronic publications via the university and library network. The purpose of the present article is to give an overview of the cooperation of Estonian academic university libraries in acquiring scientific information. In addition, state financing policy for digital scientific information is discussed. Usage and cost data pertaining to digital scientific information is analyzed for the three largest university libraries of Estonia-University of Tartu Library, Tallinn University of Technology Library, and Tallinn University Academic Library. These three libraries were chosen because the critical mass for fulfilling the tasks of academic and university libraries has historically accumulated in these libraries. The period 2004-2009 was chosen since the libraries began to make substantial increases in their e-services as well as in expenditures on digital scientific information during this timeframe. In order to evaluate the digital services and resources in Estonian university libraries, the following data and performance indicators have assumed (based, but not limited, on the International Standards ISO 2789: 2006 and ISO 11620: 2008): 1. data and performance indicators related to the usage of the library services and resources: number of registered users, number of visits, number of virtual visits, number of licensed databases, number of collections on physical careers, number of e-publication titles, number of loans, number of content units downloaded, 2. data and performance indicators related to the expenses of the library: acquisitions costs, percentage of the expense of e-documents in the acquisition costs, acquisition costs per student.