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Understanding, implementing and using the COUNTER Code of Practice for Books and Reference Works

Understanding, implementing and using the COUNTER Code of Practice for Books and Reference Works. Jenny Walker Xrefer Ltd.

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Understanding, implementing and using the COUNTER Code of Practice for Books and Reference Works

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  1. Understanding, implementing and using the COUNTER Code of Practice for Books and Reference Works Jenny Walker Xrefer Ltd.

  2. " Long and painful experience has taught me one great principle in managing business for other people, viz., If you want to inspire confidence, give plenty of statistics. It does not matter that they should be accurate, or even intelligible, as long as there is enough of them." Lewis Carroll (C. L. Dodgson) Three Years in a Curatorship by One Whom It Has Tried (1886) ? UKSG Conference 2007

  3. Lies, damn lies and usage statistics • “Lies, damn lies and usage statistics”. Web4Lib. March/April 2007 • Ouija Boards? • Using stats from: • EZProxy servers • Metasearch • Link Resolvers UKSG Conference 2007

  4. COUNTER • Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources • Non-profit organization formed in 2002 • Builds on related work of ARL, ICOLC and NISO. • COUNTER Code of Practice for Journals and databases (v2 April 2005); Books and Reference Works (v1 March 2006) • Register of compliant vendors; compliance is audited by 3rd party

  5. COUNTER for Books and Reference Works • Built on success –and structure - of COUNTER for ejournals, but… • Difficult to develop. What is a content unit? • Demand from librarians not yet very strong • Decision to develop, release and then tweak • Code of Practice released March 2006 • Four vendors have implemented this: Blackwells, Greenwood, Coutts and Xrefer UKSG Conference 2007

  6. COUNTER Reports UKSG Conference 2007

  7. UKSG Conference 2007

  8. COUNTER Compliance UKSG Conference 2007

  9. Implementation: Xrefer case study • Code of Practice released March 2006 • Existing Xreferplus proprietary reports including: • Searches, sessions and entries viewed • Most popular titles, most popular searches • COUNTER implementation developed in a couple of days and released in June 2006 • Title vs section requests? • COUNTER turnaway reports not applicable; no limits on usage per institution • Double counting? • Compliance July 2006 UKSG Conference 2007

  10. ? UKSG Conference 2007

  11. Too few (core) books available online • Need better understanding of ebook usage metrics • what should libraries measure? • who is using ebooks? • how are they using these? • downloading whole books? chapters? • Not enough COUNTER-compliant vendors UKSG Conference 2007

  12. JISC Initiative 2007 (Core text books) The national e-books observatory project will assess the impacts, observe behaviours and develop new models to stimulate the e-books market. See http://www.jiscebooksproject.org/ UKSG Conference 2007

  13. Other Issues • Current focus of analysis is on sessions and searches: • Impact of technological innovations – RSS/Alerts, Metasearch/OpenURL • Count of items as most effective measure? • SUSHI for automated harvesting of usage stats UKSG Conference 2007

  14. SUSHI • Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative • automated harvesting of usage data from publisher (or aggregator) sites • Works with COUNTER XML reports and other usage reports (including those for books and reference works) • Important for libraries and content providers • Draft standard for trial use – Sept 2006

  15. What you should do • Publishers • Just do it! • Learn from journal and database experience • Librarians • demand COUNTER compliance of your providers; but.. • Be aware of (sometimes significant) changes in usage statistics when switching from vendor-specific statistics • Know that even COUNTER is not perfect eg session timeouts vary by vendor • Understand the impact on usage statistics of “new” technologies eg RSS/Alerts, metasearch, mashups UKSG Conference 2007

  16. Questions/Discussion jenny.walker@xrefer.com

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