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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