Electronic journal usage statistics

1
Electronic journal usage statistics
Present practice and future progress

• Tony Kidd
• Glasgow University Library
• t.kidd_at_lib.gla.ac.uk

2
Importance of usage statistics

• Provision and use
• Expenditure on e-journals
• Marketing
• Budget allocation

3
Provision of e-journals

• E-journals at Glasgow Univ Library
• 1997 362
• 1998 740
• 1999 1545
• 2000 3018
• 2001 4507
• 2002 5526

4
Expenditure on e-journals

• 2000/01 Glasgow expenditure (SCONUL)
• Print serials 473000
• Online serials 70000
• Printonline serials 715000
• Online databases 274000
• Print etc books 709000
• Online books 87000
• Document delivery 86000
• Total 2414000

5
Expenditure on e-journals

• Some percentages
• Online serials/All serials 5.5
• Online (incl print)/All serials 62.4
• Doc del/All serials 6.8
• Online books/All books 10.9
• All online/All materials 47.5

6
Marketing of e-journals

• Target low-use departments
• Varying use of journals
• Benchmarking
• High use encourages more funding?

7
Budget allocation

• Formula 5.5
• Internal measurement sampling
• Local cache
• Non-Faculty based access
• Imprecise measurement

8
Budget allocation

• Computing Service statistics at Glasgow UL
• Clin Medicine 26.7
• Biomed Life Sci 22.3
• Physical Sci 5.2
• Vet Medicine 5.0
• Engineering 3.5
• Soc Sci 2.0
• Dental 1.8
• Law/Financial 1.8
• Arts 1.4
• Comp/Math Sci 1.1
• Education 0.1
• Other 28.5

9
External v internal

• Internal web pages
• Double effort
• Direct access
• Access via links

10
External usage statistics

• Available from most large publishers
• ICOLC Guidelines for statistical measures of
  usage of web-based information resources
• BUT
• Inconsistent
• Different formats
• Different timetables
• Different definitions

11
External usage statistics

• Source
• Publisher
• Gateway
• Aggregator
• Browse or search?
• Linking

12
Possible solutions

• PALS usage statistics working group
• ARL E-metrics project
• ICOLC Guidelines
• National Commission on Libraries and Information
  Science (NCLIS) Electronic access and use related
  measures
• NISO revision of Z39.7 (Library Statistics)
• ISO revision of 2789 (library statistics) and
  11563 (library performance measures)

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COUNTER

• http//www.projectCounter.org/

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COUNTER Endorsed by

• AAP, Association of American Publishers
• ALPSP, The Association of Learned and
  Professional Society Publishers
• ARL, Association of Research Libraries
• ASA, Association of Subscription Agents and
  Intermediaries
• BIC/EDItEUR
• JISC, Joint Information Systems Committee
• NCLIS, National Commission on Libraries and
  Information Science
• NISO, National Information Standards Organization
• PA, The Publishers Association
• STM, International Association of Scientific,
  Technical Medical Publishers
• UKSG, United Kingdom Serials Group

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COUNTER structure

• Chair Richard Gedye, Oxford University Press
• rgedye_at_projectCounter.org
• Project Director Peter Shepherd
• pshepherd_at_projectCounter.org
• Steering Group
• c30 members
• endorsing organisations
• librarians
• publishers intermediaries
• Task forces

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COUNTER Code of Practice

• Release 1 by end-2002
• Usage reports
• Librarians survey
• Closing date 15 August
• http//www.projectCounter.org/
• Definitions
• Technical measurement considerations

17
COUNTER 2003 onwards

• Code revision, compatible with previous releases
• Levels of compliance
• Monitoring/audit
• But most important
• Adoption/implementation
• of a single code