Post on 04-Feb-2016
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Use Measures for Electronic Resources: Theory and Practice
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A Vendor’s Perspective
ALCTS June 27, 2005Oliver Pesch
Chief Strategist for E-ResourcesEBSCO Information Services
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The questions…
• What are vendors doing to make statistics gathering easier?
• Why use EBSCO as a source of usage statistics if not all statistics are available through them?
• What is the role of the vendor to provide usage statistics for products for which they are not the vendor?
• What is the impact of federated searching?• Is there a role for a “middle person” or
consolidator of usage statistics?• Is COUNTER the right direction?• How can we make it better?
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What are vendors doing to make statistics gathering easier?
• Accessibility of usage statistics
– Provide customers with the ability to set up EBSCOadmin logins with functionality limited to read only access to usage reports.
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What are vendors doing to make statistics gathering easier?
• Ease of use and flexibility
- Options on the user interface are easy to find and easy to use. Customize reports and analysis with a few clicks of the mouse.
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What are vendors doing to make statistics gathering easier?
• Automation of delivery
– Customers can schedule any report to be run automatically and emailed on a regular basis.
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Sample
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Sample
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Sample
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Why use EBSCO if all usage statistics are not available through them?
• EBSCO delivers full text through:– EBSCOhost full text databases – The EJS e-journal gateway
• COUNTER Code of Practice dictates that the site delivering full text is responsible for reporting on it
• EBSCO is obliged to report usage and is the only valid source for this usage
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What is the role of a vendor to provide statistics for products for which they aren’t
the vendor?
• A content provider can only provide usage data for content it delivers
• If the provider is a listing service or link resolver, it can provide link-out statistics, but not full text requests
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A&I Database
Link Resolver
E-Journal Gateway
Publisher site
User finds citation of interest in an A&I
database. An OpenURL link
providedCitation
Link menu
Abstractor TOC
Full Text
Link-Out Link-Out Link-Out Full text
Linking
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A&I Database
Link Resolver
E-Journal Gateway
Publisher site
User finds citation of interest in an A&I
database. An OpenURL link
providedCitation
Link menu
Abstractor TOC
Full Text
Link-Out Link-Out Full text
Linking
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What is the impact of Federated Searching and how can EBSCO handle this?
- Federated or metasearch products can greatly inflate session and usage counts and thus this activity need to be isolated for comparative results.
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Searching without Metasearch
EBSCO OCLC ProQuest OVID
user
Resources
-Product 1-Product 2-Product 3…
Visits = 1Sessions = 2Searches = 2
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With Metasearch engine
EBSCO OCLC ProQuest OVID
user
Metasearch
-Search All -Business-Medicine…
Visits = 1Sessions = 20Searches = 20
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Visits = 1Sessions = 20Searches = 20
With Metasearch engine
EBSCO OCLC ProQuest OVID
user
Metasearch
-Search All -Business-Medicine…
Visits = 1Sessions = 28Searches = 28
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Controlling over-counting
• Libraries should isolate metasearch sessions and searches– On EBSCOhost this is achieved by assigning
the metasearch to a specific user group or user profile
• Support metasearch standardization activities through NISO – We need a standard way to recognize a
metasearch session• Encourage further research through
COUNTER participation
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Is there a role for a “middle person” or consolidator to assist in providing usage?
• Yes, in some form…– Module from ILS vendor allows scheduled retrieval of
raw usage to produce consolidated reports– Open Source or collaborative tool, such as being
proposed by the ERUS project (http://web.simmons.edu/~andersoc/erus/)
– Central data warehouse which combines and consolidates usage from all vendors for many libraries
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Is COUNTER the right direction?
• Most definitely…– Provides a code of practice for basic but
valuable reporting– Makes uniform reporting a real possibility– Clarifies expectations to vendors – Enforces compliance with the audit– Provides a forum for vendors and libraries to
move forward
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How can we make it better?
• Develop usage-consolidation and reporting tools based on COUNTER
• Machine-to-machine friendly formats• Automation of report retrieval• Continued support of standards efforts• Keeping short-term goals modest