JISCMail - LIB-STATS Archives

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some of which is currently on IngentaConnect, InformaWorld, the new Atypon Informa Healthcare site and the soon to be superceded Atypon Informa Pharmaceutical Science site?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
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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
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