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It's indeed unfortunate that a number of vendors / aggregators seem either unable or unwilling to supply usage details. This definitely places the customer at a disadvantage when it comes to evaluating simple value for money. Being asked to pay for statistics is a "diabolical liberty" and tells you all you need to know about a vendor's attitude to its customers ! As we know, with such vendors there may not be a choice. If this helps, here's an outline of how we at LBS have tackled this problem as part of our Performance Indicators process which gathers consistent statistics on usage of all products in our electronic portfolio: - essentially we have taken the view that if vendors can't or won't supply statistics, we have to collect them at point of use ourselves. In fact we log every service access even if vendor has own statistics (lets us evaluate them as there are differences in the calculation of a "session", etc) - we have a "logging" database that records each service access (ie. if user clicks the link either to an electronic journal title in e.g. ingenta, or to EBSCO Business Source Premier) - the database record is created because we make the access URL a "parameter" to our logging program, e.g. http://server.myorg.ac.uk/cgi-bin/logstats.cgi?URL=http://www.ahost.com&service=A+Host is what's clicked on by the user for "A Host" (and not merely http://www.ahost.com). The overhead is utterly minimal We record IP address, browser type, date and time, so we can see on-campus and remote usage separately as well as combined. Also, the database feeds an admin web page so I can see real-time updated figures intra-day across our portfolio. The monthly stats can then be easily downloaded for analysis in our performance indicators system. A similar system is used with our "JournalFinder" system for electronic journals - records each access instance for each title in each vendor collection (so can see e.g. how many accesses for same title in ingenta vs SwetsBlackwell) This doesn't record "turnaways" or usage within a system, and therefore only reports a "session access attempt" but it has certainly given use strong "leverage" when it comes to renewing subscriptions with vendors who cannot supply usage statistics. When planning our PI process, I simply listed all the different modes of statistics gathering amongst those vendors offering it (ranges from the excellent to the perfunctory) and concluded that the programming time and benefits far outweighed the labour of having to retrieve stats manually and to normalise them into our matrix for analysis. We do of course, cross-reference vendors' stats as well for their useful detail. Obviously, our system can be bypassed where users "know" the access URL, and if a service offers no usage stats, there's a loophole, but we are so far pleased with the results of this project. In some ways we regret having to do this at all, but given the state of the market and the enormous differences in attitude amongst vendors to this issue, we chose to tackle the task head on. Jonathan Eaton Maureen Richardson wrote: > Could I have your views on this? As many of you will be doing, I am > preparing my budget proposals for next year and again as I am sure many of > you are doing, I am looking at usage statistics of journals and online > databases. I routinely email the suppliers of resources who do not provide > me with the facility of retrieving my own statistics. I contacted one > supplier who told me they would charge 50 pounds for this information and 50 > pounds each time I requested it! I was stunned. The ironic thing is that we > have no doubt that this is a well used database and what I actually wanted > was the number of simultaneous users and turnaways. We were in fact > wondering if we should increase the licence. We pay 1700 pounds for this > database and I think we should be entitled to statistics. Have colleagues > ever had this reply before and what has been their response? It is an > essential database and we cannot cancel. There is another supplier but they > cost more. > > Thanks > > Maureen > > Maureen Richardson > Journals and Electronic Resources Manager > Learning Resource Centre > Edge Hill > St Helens Rd > Ormskirk > Lancashire L39 4QP -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=- Jonathan Eaton Electronic Resources Manager London Business School Sussex Place Regent's Park London NW1 4SA UK Tel. +44 (0) 20 7262 5050 ext 4238 Fax. +44 (0) 20 7706 1897 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-