Thank you, Bonnie.  I have absolute tunnel vision when I look at web sites.
I managed just fine with your help.

                - Donna

Donna Packer
Head of Acquisitions/Serials Services
Collection Development Coordinator
Western Washington University Libraries
516 High Street
Bellingham, WA 98225-9103
Telephone: 360.650.3335
Fax: 360.650.3954
Email: [log in to unmask]


-----Original Message-----
From: Eric Hellman [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 8:01 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Next Generation Usage Statistics


A customer inquiry about statistics yesterday prompted me to respond
"We'll help you do this the right way, but if you want us to do it
the wrong way, we'll be charging extra."

On reflection I realized that it sounded a bit arrogant (that's my 10
years at Bell Labs talking), so I thought I should at least write up
how I think we as a community should pursue the statistics problem,
and let people in on the discussion.

The next generation of internet based information services has
started to arrive, and customization is pervasive. The people paying
the money (libraries) need to be putting their "brands" on things so
that the people who support them will see where their information is
coming from. To help libraries do this, information services are
adding the ability to attach a library logo, to add links to the
library's holdings, to add OpenURL links, even to use the library's
custom web design.

Once you have access to these customization tools, you can really
start to use them to centralize your accumulation of usage
statistics. For example, if a service lets you embed a graphic on a
web page, you can use that embedded graphic to track usage by using a
coded graphic.  For example, you could have firstsearch display the
graphic "http://stats.university.edu/logo.gif?firstsearch"  Then
every time a user loads this page, you get a hit on the
stats.university.edu server, and the logs will show the user IP
address, the referring page, basically more than you really should be
knowing. It turns out that there a lot of really good, cheap or free
programs that you can use to analyze server log files. We use one
called "Analog".

Looking further,  you will see services with the ability to add
OpenURL metadata onto these tracking gifs. I know this will happen
because we just implemented it, and features get copied in
competitive markets;-}

Looking even further, I imagine the development of intelligent
logging and awareness systems- ones that spot problems long before
users get the chance to complain about them, ones that adaptively
help users find resources relevant to their current tasks, ones that
anticipate what the chairman of the physics department will ask for
tomorrow.

So what I'm sketching here is a strategy for centralizing the
accumulation and analysis of usage statistics on library web servers.
You can eliminate vender-to-vendor variability, and decide for
yourself how to summarize information.

By the way, I will be at UKSG next month if anyone on the other side
of the pond wants to tell me what a raving lunatic I am, or buy me a
free pint, or both.

Eric
--

Eric Hellman, President                            Openly Informatics, Inc.
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