Comments below. For what it is worth.
---------------------------------------
Mike Poulin
Digital Resources Librarian & Coordinator of Digital Initiatives
Colgate University Libraries
13 Oak Drive
Hamilton, NY 13346
315-228-7025
fax: 315-228-7934
[log in to unmask]
>
> Hi Mike,
>
>
>
> Thanks for this – it makes very interesting reading.
>
>
>
> I have some more questions which I hope you can answer for me:
>
> 1. How do you deal with bundled titles i.e. journal subscriptions
> which come with other titles e.g. Art Book which comes as part of
> subscription to Art History – do you have to identify these yourself so that
> costs/download for example aren’t overestimated?
>
-- For important titles - I divide up the costs across the multiple titles -
Art Book - I don't worry about since Art History is unlikely to ever get
canceled. BBA is one of the titles I break the costs over the separate
sections.
> 2. How do you deal with title changes where usage appears both under
> the current title and the former title e.g. Literacy (formerly known as
> Reading until 2004) – do you have to identify these yourself so that
> costs/download for example aren’t overestimated?
>
-- I just don't worry about it. I have an very practical approach to using
the stats. It is only going to be the "worse" cost per use or unused titles
which end up on the cancellation list. We have a little under 3,000
subscriptions between periodicals and standing orders. For the few which
had title changes which might be jeopardy, I would have a note on the title
change in the order record and would catch it on final review if we were
actively considering cancellation.
> 3. How do you deal with title transfers where usage is still being
> recorded on former publishers’ platforms – do you have to identify these
> yourself so that costs/download for that particular title isn’t
> overestimated?
>
Since the SS Counter 360 platform clusters multiple platforms under an
authority title in most cases, I see all instances of the online use
together - Jstor, EbscoHOST, Direct sub 1, Direct sub 2. We are interested
usually in total use of a title so generally that suffices.
> 4. How do you deal with subscribed content that is on multiple
> platforms – e.g. Informa Healthcare content some of which is currently on
> IngentaConnect, InformaWorld, the new Atypon Informa Healthcare site and the
> soon to be superceded Atypon Informa Pharmaceutical Science site?
>
See above - editorial comment - Hate Informa for breaking off the pharm -
just plain stupid. Forces me to have to download another set of stats for 1
subscribed title. It would seem that they could figure a way to allow us to
select which platform we want to get the titles on so we would not have this
splintering of content on to multiple sites.
> 5. Since it can be difficult with “big deals” to always know exactly
> what one has a right to access how can one easily deal with identifying what
> needs to be removed i.e. zero usage because one doesn’t have access, zero
> usage because a “subscribed” title isn’t being used (which may have a number
> of reasons including one doesn’t know it is a subscribed title within a
> deal!) etc.
>
-- We don't have many big deals - and they are not all that big - most of
our subs are title by title. Here is a brief description of what I do with
the zeros. For vendors who return all the titles including those not
subscribed assuming that there are more than a few (just a few extra, I
don't worry about)
- I download the stats
- I sort the file and keep all the non-zero stats irrespective of if we
subscribe
- I run a cross compare against a list of all my subscribed titles based
on ISSN - noting that this is not perfect and that there can be ISSN
variations - but is it close enough.
I use Filemaker for this and it is very easy to do. It also can be done
with Access or Excel but having done it all 3 ways find that using Filemaker
is faster and simpler.
- For those zero titles which we subscribe - I extract the list of them
and append them to the JR1 which has 1+ uses.
-- Finally - While we use and really like Counter 360 - I do find that there
are times we need to be able to do data analysis where there is no place to
load the information into Counter 360. Perhaps if we had the ERM product
then it could serve but we regularly look at data fields such as - is it
online, print + online, primarily print for titles which use username
password or current year only access, or print. We need to be able to
compare print and online at the same time and that is tricky with these
online use compilation services. So we take the Counter data back out of SS
and match it against a Filemaker file of current subscriptions. That gives
us a place to add notes - deal with titles which don't have use data - e.g.
look up click throughs, add print use, locals subject headings (department),
etc. It works well and gives us more flexibility to customize than any ERM
system which I have reviewed to this point. Since it focuses on the titles
which we have individual subscriptions to, it limits the review to the
domain we have "control" over for cancellations. (note that we add all the
individual titles which we had print subscriptions to which are now part of
deals - example is Project Muse - if we had a print subscription then we add
a separate record to the file for the title but the other titles in Muse
which came as "add ons" won't be in the review file.
What SS Counter 360 lets us do is compile all the stats in a single place
and merge the variant titles. Really valuable. It will become even more
helpful with SUSHI but until we get the publishers to give us reports that
we need - e.g. without the zero's for non-subscribed titles - I will
unfortunately have to manually edit them since I don't want the subscribed
zeros to get lost - I want to cancel those titles not hide them.
>
>
> I guess what I am trying to find out is how much additional work one needs
> to do with these types of products to make sure one has got the correct
> information at ones fingertips so that the right decisions are made about
> cancellations, renewals etc.
>
>
>
> Cheers
>
> Lesley
>
>
>
>
>
> Lesley Crawshaw
>
> Knowledge & Business Intelligence Consultant
>
> Information Hertfordshire
>
> University of Hertfordshire
>
> Tel: 01707 285508
>
>
>
> Joint List Owner: [log in to unmask]
>
>
>
> *From:* [log in to unmask] [mailto:
> [log in to unmask]] *On Behalf Of *Mike Poulin
> *Sent:* 04 September 2009 19:32
> *To:* [log in to unmask]
> *Subject:* Re: [lib-stats] RE: Usage stats for non subscribed-to services
>
>
>
> Hi Lesley
>
> We use SS Counter 360. It does not make any relationship to the ownership
> / payment of titles unless you input the data.
>
> In my opinion - Wiley Blackwell is among the worst offenders as they return
> their entire contents of their stable of titles (over 1,900) with the
> reports. It makes it difficult to see the titles you subscribe to vs the
> others. SS will either load the entire file or, if you choose , you can
> edit the data prior to loading and just load the non-zero titles. I go an
> extra step and add back in any of the subscribed titles which might have
> zero uses. It takes a bit of work to accomplish this so is annoying. My
> preference would be to have the option to filter out all zero use titles
> except those with subscriptions when gathering the stats.
>
> Once the data is in - you can add cost data if you subscribe to the titles
> individually or if you have a package - distribute the cost across the
> package. Those titles with a cost will be those that are subscribed, those
> without will have no cost or cost per use associated with them. If you
> don't add costs, then it is harder to identify the subscribed titles vs.
> non-subscribed.
>
> In the those cases - one can add a weighting factor which can be used for a
> number of purposes - we use it specifically to identify the titles we
> subscribe to individually by our two main locations though other sites use
> it for other purposes. One has to do it manually but the code is applied at
> the authority title level so you can run reports based on them which
> extracts all the use stats for a title from all its providers - e.g. Journal
> of Library Stats - if coded as an owned title - would show all providers -
> Jstor, aggregator databases, and the individual direct subscription. It
> works well.
>
> Mike
>
> ---------------------------------------
> Mike Poulin
> Digital Resources Librarian & Coordinator of Digital Initiatives
> Colgate University Libraries
> 13 Oak Drive
> Hamilton, NY 13346
> 315-228-7025
> fax: 315-228-7934
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 4:48 AM, Crawshaw, Lesley A <
> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> One of the issues here seems to be inconsistencies in the way different
> services are recording usage. Some services seem to only show our subscribed
> usage e.g. NPG whereas others seem to show all usage including
> non-subscribed usage that may include trials, free issues, free backfiles
> etc. However, there are some services where one doesn't see the usage of
> e.g. free backfiles unless one has a subscription to those resources.
>
> Whilst it maybe relatively easy to identify/isolate such non-subscribed
> usage for "small/medium" publishers it is not as easy to isolate this data
> from "big deal" publishers.
>
> Whilst I take Matthew's point that it offers a useful window on possible
> new subscriptions I would prefer that this usage didn't dirty the usage I am
> primarily interested in especially when different services have different
> interpretations of what usage should appear in a COUNTER report.
>
> I'd be interested to know how services such as 360 COUNTER deal with this
> non-subscribed usage.
>
> Cheers
> Lesley
>
>
> Lesley Crawshaw
> Knowledge & Business Intelligence Consultant
> Information Hertfordshire
> University of Hertfordshire
> Tel: 01707 285508
>
> Joint List Owner: [log in to unmask]
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:
> [log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Dyer, Renata
> Sent: 04 September 2009 00:40
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [lib-stats] RE: Usage stats for non subscribed-to services
> [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]
>
> Hi Sarah,
> We just recently discovered that Palgrave recorded our subscription to one
> of their publications online against another account in their system. I am
> assuming that this other client would subsequently get our subscription
> included in their usage stats.
>
> This has been rectified now but it took a while to get diagnosed.
>
> The subscriptions was done through EBSCO and I am not sure what went wrong
> but I thought I'll share this particular scenario with you as one way to
> interpret incorrect usage report coverage.
>
> Cheers,
> Renata Dyer
> Systems Librarian
> Information Services - Treasury
> Langton Cres, Parkes, ACT, Australia
> ph: +61 2 62632736
> e: [log in to unmask]
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:
> [log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Taylor, Sarah
> Sent: Thursday, 3 September 2009 11:35 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [lib-stats] Usage stats for non subscribed-to services
>
>
> Hi all,
>
> Apologies for may seem like a really odd question, but I've been
> noticing a few strange things in some of our usage stats reports and
> wondered if anyone had any words of wisdom!
>
> Sometimes, when I request a report from a provider from whom we have a
> number of services, I seem to have usage stats for services that we
> don't actually pay for, nor do we think we have any access. I queried
> this with Ebsco once, who wondered if we'd had a trial to something (a
> sensible explanation), but we hadn't to the products in question. I
> suppose there's really a whole other issue here of getting access to
> things we should be paying for but haven't, but I did wonder if anyone
> else had found this, and if so, do you do anything with the information?
> Could it inform future decisions?
>
> Like I said, a strange one, but all thoughts greatly appreciated!
>
> Thanks.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Sarah
>
>
>
> Sarah Taylor
> Electronic Resources Librarian
> Library
> University of Bolton
> Deane Road
> Bolton
> BL3 5AB
>
> 01204 903099
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
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