[Eril-l] [EXT] Re: Cost per use from COUNTER 5 Ebook reports

Tue Nov 9 08:46:01 PST 2021

Making sense of COUNTER COP5 metrics for books:
First I highly recommend the 8 minute official COUNTER "class" video on book reports and metrics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NFG76TLczg

Everything below assumes we're talking about what happens within a single "session" (which implies of course a single user too). [see note about this below]

Basically, the difference between unique_item and unique_title is that item will treat chapters from the same book as different uses, whereas title will count all chapters from the same book as a single use.

So if your goal is try to equate ebook use with print book circulation, unique_title is most definitely the right metric to look at.

Sessions: some smaller content providers have trouble determining what counts as a single session, so they're allowed to have a fixed time period rather than actual connection status, to use for this. Such a provider, for instance, may consider everything from a given IP address between 12:00:00 - 12:59:59 (that's one hour) as a "session", so the patron who starts reading chapters at 12:50pm and is still reading more chapters from the same book at 1:10pm will count as 2 unique_title_requests, rather than the usual 1. None of the really major providers in our industry are doing this, but smaller providers may.  This is explained in more detail at: https://cop5.projectcounter.org/en/5.0.2/07-processing/04-counting-unique-titles.html

Melissa Belvadi
Collections Librarian
University of Prince Edward Island
mbelvadi at upei.ca

________________________________
From: Eril-l <eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org> on behalf of Harker, Karen <Karen.Harker at unt.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, November 9, 2021 12:31 AM
To: Harper, Cynthia <charper at vts.edu>; Sarah Glasser <Sarah.Glasser at hofstra.edu>; eril-l at lists.eril-l.org <eril-l at lists.eril-l.org>
Subject: Re: [Eril-l] [EXT] Re: Cost per use from COUNTER 5 Ebook reports

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As I understand it, Person A’s use of Ebook X over 5 separate sessions would count as 5 Unique_Title_Requests; Person B’s use would count as 8 UTR’s.  The purpose of the UTR is to consolidate multiple uses of a particular title within a single session into a single use, thus getting more similar to our traditional understanding of print book circulation.

Now, what I’m not sure about is when a user “checks out” an ebook for a certain period of time…say, 7 days.  That person has sole authorization to use (or not use) that book any number of times during that period.  Is each use (that is, in separate sessions) during that period of time counted as separate UTR’s?

Karen R. Harker, MLS, MPH

Preferred Pronouns: she, her, hers

Collection Assessment Librarian

UNT Libraries

From: Eril-l <eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org> On Behalf Of Harper, Cynthia
Sent: Monday, November 8, 2021 2:39 PM
To: Sarah Glasser <Sarah.Glasser at hofstra.edu>; eril-l at lists.eril-l.org
Subject: [EXT] Re: [Eril-l] Cost per use from COUNTER 5 Ebook reports

But none of the COUNTER 5 metrics can show that person A used Ebook X for 5 sessions, and person B used it over 8 different sessions, and count that as 2 uses, correct?

Thanks,

Cindy

From: Sarah Glasser <Sarah.Glasser at hofstra.edu<mailto:Sarah.Glasser at hofstra.edu>>
Sent: Monday, November 8, 2021 3:22 PM
To: Harper, Cynthia <charper at vts.edu<mailto:charper at vts.edu>>; eril-l at lists.eril-l.org<mailto:eril-l at lists.eril-l.org>
Subject: RE: Cost per use from COUNTER 5 Ebook reports

Hi Cindy,

At my library we decided to use the metric Unique_Title_Request for e-books because it is more in line with a print book circulation (i.e. a use of the book regardless of whether the patron used one or ten chapters). I think the unique-item-requests counts chapter/section use (the “item” can be either an entire book or a chapter).  On page 10 of the Friendly COUNTER 5 guide for books (attached – not sure attachment will come through distribution list but sending to your email too), it suggests using the Unique_Title_Request for calculating cost per usage.

Hope this helps.

Best regards,

Sally

**************************************
Sarah (Sally) Glasser
Serials and E-Resources Librarian
Axinn Library-Hofstra University
Hempstead, NY  11549

From: Eril-l <eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org<mailto:eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org>> On Behalf Of Harper, Cynthia
Sent: Monday, November 8, 2021 3:07 PM
To: eril-l at lists.eril-l.org<mailto:eril-l at lists.eril-l.org>
Subject: [Eril-l] Cost per use from COUNTER 5 Ebook reports

EXTERNAL MESSAGE

Hello – I am just realizing I may not be computing the unique titles used/requested for an ebook resource properly.

In the past, I have taken the number of titles mentioned in a TR report as the unique ebooks – what we would have had to purchase as firmorders if we wanted to replace the use we got from the subscription.

At first, I thought that that’s what Unique_Item_Requests represented when I started using COUNTER 5 Report Tool. Now that I read the definition, I’m not so sure.  I haven’t gone back in and compared the number of titles in my TR report to the Uniquet_Item_Requests in my PR reports, but I suspect they’re not the same. And if I had used Unique_Title_Requests, would that have been better? Can anyone shed light on this please?

EBOOK USAGE AND COST PER USE

Jan-Oct.

10-month price

Jan-Oct.

platform

data_type

metric_type

year

reporting_period_total

subscr price

Firmorder cost 2021

Cost per Use

BloomsburyCollections

Book

Unique_Item_Requests

2021

92

$ 95.00

$ 33.19

Brill

Book

Unique_Item_Requests

2021

1

$ -

Cambridge Core

Book

Unique_Item_Requests

2021

146

$ 9.18

De Gruyter Platform

Book

Unique_Item_Requests

2021

6

$ -

EBSCOhost

Book

Unique_Item_Requests

2021

5230

$ 1,307.81

$ 1.10

Grove Music Online

Book

Unique_Item_Requests

2021

9

$ 190.56

JSTOR

Book

Unique_Item_Requests

2021

47

$ -

Manchester University Press

Book

Unique_Item_Requests

2021

6

$ -

Oxford African American Studies Center

Book

Unique_Item_Requests

2021

11

$ 85.91

Oxford Biblical Studies Online

Book

Unique_Item_Requests

2021

274

$ 6.28

Oxford Bibliographies

Book

Unique_Item_Requests

2021

33

$ 10.83

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Book

Unique_Item_Requests

2021

34

$ 45.64

Oxford English Dictionary

Book

Unique_Item_Requests

2021

735

$ 0.54

Oxford Handbooks Online

Book

Unique_Item_Requests

2021

178

$ 8.82

Oxford Reference

Book

Unique_Item_Requests

2021

1

$ -

Oxford Research Encyclopedias

Book

Unique_Item_Requests

2021

6

$ -

Oxford Scholarship Online

Book

Unique_Item_Requests

2021

11

$ -

ProQuest

Book

Unique_Item_Requests

2021

3

$ -

ProQuest Ebook Central

Book

Unique_Item_Requests

2021

3036

$ 2,831.94

$ 3.41

Project MUSE

Book

Unique_Item_Requests

2021

1218

486.25

$ 1.77

Wiley Online Library

Book

Unique_Item_Requests

2021

2

$ -

Cindy Harper

Electronic Services and Periodicals Librarian

Virginia Theological Seminary, Box 159

3737 Seminary Road

Alexandria, VA 22304

charper at vts.edu<mailto:charper at vts.edu>

(703)461-1794

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