[Eril-l] [External] Ebook Statistics: Software Solutions? Best practices?

Fri Jun 4 17:37:17 PDT 2021

Hi Adrian

We subscribe to the CELUS usage statistics platform https://www.celus.net/ and have found it to be an excellent product that meets all our requirements.

CELUS are members of the Technical Advisory Board of the COUNTER organisation, and actively participate in the development of the COUNTER standard and its future releases. They are continually adding new features to the product, which is always a good sign.

You can view usage statistics for your ebooks at the title and platform level for both COUNTER 4 and COUNTER 5, depending on your requirements. Most of our vendors have moved to COUNTER 5 but one vendor (IOS Press) is still on COUNTER 4.

The team is very quick to respond to and resolve any SUSHI harvesting problems. My manager is very happy with the dashboard graphics which are easy to understand by management, and we can easily see whether our resources are getting enough use when it comes to renewal time. We are relieved to finally have a cost-effective and reliable solution for harvesting our usage statistics, after years of struggling with UStat (Ex Libris) and Redlink (no longer in business).

You can set up a trial of the platform before you subscribe, to get an understanding of understand how it all works - and if you run into trouble the team can set up a zoom conference for you if you need help.

Cheers
Vivien

Vivien Hewitt | Electronic Services Librarian | Library & Information Service for EMHS and SMHS
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South Metropolitan Health Service
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From: Eril-l <eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org> On Behalf Of Harker, Karen
Sent: Saturday, 5 June 2021 2:19 AM
To: eril-l at lists.eril-l.org
Subject: Re: [Eril-l] [External] Ebook Statistics: Software Solutions? Best practices?

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Any solution to gathering usage stats is going to be time-laborious or expensive or some balance of time and cost.  There is a growing set of open source solutions, but they require some programming and data management skills.  There are also some prominent stats gathering services, but these are costly and still require a certain amount of skills to analyze and manage the data.

I think the most economical solution is investment in advanced Excel training and then use Excel for compiling data from the files that are downloaded.  This requires access to Excel and training, but once this investment is made, the data features enable data from multiple files to be “queried”.  This is especially good if you don’t have a very large collection of ebooks, because there are limits to number of rows that Excel can handle.

The problems you’re having with LibInsights and SUSHI are more likely related to the platforms providing the data rather than LibInsights itself.  Many of our platforms that claim to have SUSHI enabled do not work or have such severe limits of time or data that we just end up downloading the data manually.  What a waste.

The other problem unique to ebook usage is, of course, the metric-level problem…that is, book- vs. chapter-level.  This is somewhat reconciled with COUNTER R5 reports (Section_Type field), but it does make trend analysis difficult to reconcile with R4 metrics (BR1 vs. BR2).  Hopefully, this problem will dissipate over time, but there are still issues (e.g. what is “section” – chapter? Sub-sections of a chapter?).

Good luck

Karen R. Harker, MLS, MPH
Collection Assessment Librarian
University of North Texas Libraries
1155 Union Blvd.
#305190
Denton, TX 76203-5017
940-565-2688

From: Eril-l <eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org<mailto:eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org>> On Behalf Of Heidi Card
Sent: Friday, June 4, 2021 1:05 PM
To: Adrian Graham <adrian.graham at austincc.edu<mailto:adrian.graham at austincc.edu>>; eril-l at lists.eril-l.org<mailto:eril-l at lists.eril-l.org>
Subject: Re: [Eril-l] [External] Ebook Statistics: Software Solutions? Best practices?

Hello!

Thank you for asking this question – I’ve wanted to get an idea of what other folks do, too, as I work without an ERM. My method has consisted separate spreadsheets that I add together, rather than one long one. I have also been working with LibInsight (via Springshare), which allows us to set up SUSHI for *some* resources. But I’ve found many inconsistencies with it (and lots of error fetching via SUSHI), and end up going back to the vendors to verify the numbers. I’ve always felt more comfortable going directly to the vendor.

I look forward to hearing what other folks are doing!

Best,

Heidi

Heidi Card (she/her), MA, MLIS
Access & Discovery Librarian, Collections & Metadata Services
Gumberg Library | Duquesne University
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From: Eril-l <eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org<mailto:eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org>> On Behalf Of Adrian Graham
Sent: Friday, June 4, 2021 12:31 PM
To: eril-l at lists.eril-l.org<mailto:eril-l at lists.eril-l.org>
Subject: [External] [Eril-l] Ebook Statistics: Software Solutions? Best practices?

Hi, all!

How do you compile ebook title level usage statistics and provide access to your selectors for collection development and weeding?

Like many of us, our ebook platforms have grown substantially over the past few years and we are searching for a better means of tracking title level usage statistics. Our current method of downloading myriad COUNTER 5 Book Requests reports from vendor admin profiles and combining them into one giant spreadsheet is time consuming and the results are difficult to parse.

Is there a software solution? We have an ERM but it doesn't have the ability to import this type of COUNTER report. Any tips and tricks would be greatly appreciated!

Best,

Adrian

--
Adrian Graham, MSIS
e-Resources Librarian / Associate Professor
Austin Community College - South Austin Campus
1820 W Stassney LN, Austin, TX 78745
512.223.9179
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