Re: Electronic journals usage statistics (David Goodman) Marcia Tuttle 14 Aug 2000 23:32 UTC

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2000 13:08:40 -0400
From: David Goodman <dgoodman@Princeton.EDU>
Subject: Re: Electronic journals usage statistics (Dan Lester)

We do not know this yet, but, Dan, you can help us.
Can you compare your statistics for journals which do offer good ip-range
based usage statistics (PNAS, ACS, etc.) with the numbers from your web statistics?
It would be nice to have some real numbers. My impression is that at least at
this university the percentage of people going through the library site is
very low, maybe 10 or 20%, and the great majority go from bookmarks or, more
usually, live cross references or
index citations. This is just an impression, and I would welcome some real
data.
Is it technically possible, by the way, for a server to record all subsequent
views based on a page: ie, if someone goes to pubmed through the library
server, to then count the journal uses that person gets clicking from the
citations there?

Marcia Tuttle wrote:
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2000 00:30:42 -0600
> From: Dan Lester <dan@riverofdata.com>
> Subject: Re: Electronic journals usage statistics (Priscilla A. Crane)
>
>
> 2. Since every use of a journal generates a page view on our own
> server, we gather the statistics on usage automatically, whether the
> user accesses the journal via the catalog, or via the webpage that
> lists the ejournals.  Yes, if someone bookmarks an ejournal, then they
> can go to it directly in many cases, and we miss some amount of usage,
> presumably small.  In addition, some ejournal sites use session
> identifiers, so they can't be bookmarked anyway.
>
> No, the statistics aren't perfect, but then neither are the ones
> based on reshelving, circulation, or thickness of dust on bound
> volumes in the stacks.
>
> If anyone wishes more information on this, just let me know.
>
> cheers
>
> dan
>
> --
> Dan Lester, Data Wrangler  dan@RiverOfData.com
> 3577 East Pecan, Boise, Idaho  83716-7115 USA
> www.riverofdata.com  www.postcard.org  www.gailndan.com

--
David Goodman
Biology Librarian, and
Co-Chair, Electronic Journals Task Force
Princeton University Library
dgoodman@princeton.edu         http://www.princeton.edu/~biolib/
phone: 609-258-3235            fax: 609-258-2627