Western Illinois University Libraries has cut online serials subscriptions in the past 2 years. The librarians were guided by the statistics for downloads provided by the publishers of the journals. However, questions were raised by both professors and librarians regarding the exact meaning of the statistics. This caused the electronic resources librarian at Western Illinois to explore the question of what actually drives usage. After reviewing the various statistics available, the librarians at Western Illinois University strongly suspected that usage is being driven by the style of research that the Internet encourages. This conclusion has implications for both collection development decisions regarding electronic resources and the guiding philosophy of university librarians. (Contains 3 tables, 5 illustrations, and 1 chart.)