[Eril-l] Making sense of usage for data resources?

[Kate Reagor]

Hi Nancy!

My MSIS capstone project involved standardizing TexShare usage data by converting non-COUNTER 5 reports into an approximated C5 equivalent. I took a lot of inspiration from GALILEO, which documents how they standardize/approximate their usage data at https://about.galileo.usg.edu/docs/materials_docs/Vendor_Stats_Type_Definitions.pdf

My starting point was typically to determine what would be that resource's full-text equivalent (full articles, media views, etc) and count that as Total Item Requests. Then if they had some way of approximating metadata/abstract/preview views, then I would add that to the full text to get Total Item Investigations. If that wasn't possible, I would usually just duplicate Requests for Investigations.

Most of the vendors also have something on their websites explaining how they count their metrics, which can be helpful in determining how to assess and convert their metrics. I've also had some success in asking them directly when that information wasn't available online.

Even if it is an approximation, creating those conversions at least makes it possible to compare data a little more easily across all platforms. And like GALILEO does, I made sure to keep documentation showing how I created those crosswalks in case there were questions about how things were counted later.

You can see my prototype dashboard at https://public.tableau.com/profile/kate.reagor#!/vizhome/UsageReports/TexShareUsageOverviewDashboard (I'm still updating it as I'm able!), and there's a button linking to the metric and conversion documentation at the bottom.


Kate Reagor
Library Technical Services Specialist
Texas State Library and Archives Commission
texshare at tsl.texas.gov<mailto:texshare at tsl.texas.gov> | kreagor at tsl.texas.gov<mailto:kreagor at tsl.texas.gov>

From: Eril-l <eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org> On Behalf Of Linden, Nancy
Sent: Thursday, December 17, 2020 12:20 PM
To: eril-l at lists.eril-l.org
Subject: [Eril-l] Making sense of usage for data resources?

Hi all,

Does anyone have any experiences or approaches they can share about how they evaluate usage for data resources?

Examples I am referring to are SimplyMap, Social Explorer, etc. that all have different metrics and are oh so different from COUNTER (understandably.)

Thanks in advance!  (Apologies if this topic has been addressed in the last year and I have missed it!)

Best,
Nancy

Nancy Linden, Collections Coordinator
University of Houston Libraries
University of Houston
A Carnegie-designated Tier One public research university
713-743-9760
linden at uh.edu<mailto:linden at uh.edu>

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