The relevance of usage metrics in lis research

Technological advancements in information industry have transformed the entire scenario of libraries and librarianship including the trends in research. Since librarianship is problem oriented and tends to focus on issues in real world and the scope of LIS research is primarily addressing the practical issues related to libraries. In view of the recent application of usage metrics in several LIS studies to find information about use, usage of e-resources and users as well as using environments etc. besides the most popular conventional methods, the emergence of usage metrics and initiatives to standardize their format was cited. Their exclusive characteristics tenable for use studies, user studies, analytical studies and bibliometric/scientometric studies and also ranking studies were discussed highlighting their relevance in realistic perspective. At the end, limitations of usage metrics were also mentioned suggesting the other methods to follow for an over view of the problem or situation.