Unsub Extender by Iowa State University

This project is called Unsub Extender, a free Python-based web application to analyze Unsub data.

Unsub is a collection analysis tool that many academic libraries use to analyze their journal subscription usage. It looks at typical demand measurements, but also how much of your demand could have been filled without a subscription, say through Open Access copies or older backfiles.

Unsub provides a lot of detailed data, but it doesn’t include a way to help you easily understand all that data.

My project, Unsub Extender, is a website that takes the export file from Unsub and uses Python to automate the creation of 13 charts and graphs.

The graphs are interactive, with zoom, click and pan, and hover, and there are a series of filters to help narrow in on areas of interest to help users explore their data

The site was launched in May 2021 and has received over 2,500 hits from 40 countries so far. Unsub Extender eliminates duplication of effort and enables libraries worldwide to make better, more data-driven decisions.