Just a reminder to all that the COUNTER "Turnaways" Report (Journal Report 2) is useless for showing true denials of access to unsubscribed journals.

The Counter Turnaway Report is actually extremely limited in scope: It counts only those turnaways DUE TO EXCEEDING THE ALLOWED NUMBER OF CONCURRENT USERS. And because many publishers do not impose any limit on the number of concurrent users, those publishers' Counter Turnaway Report will always register zero.  You might have thousands of denials of access to unsubscribed journals from those publishers; but your Counter Turnaway Report will still show zero turnaways.

The Counter Turnaway Report is highly misleading, because its title contains no indication of its very limited scope.  To quote from the Counter glossary:  "A turnaway (rejected session) is defined as an unsuccessful log-in to an electronic service due to exceeding the simultaneous user limit allowed by the licence."

For those librarians who desire a true picture of denials of access to unsubscribed journals, I suggest you contact publishers directly.

Best wishes,
Nick Niemeyer
Site License Manager, Annual Reviews
nniemeyer@annualreviews.org
650.843.6652   FAX: 650.424.0910
Tollfree USA/Canada: 800.523.8635
www.annualreviews.org

-----Original Message-----
From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum [mailto:SERIALST@list.uvm.edu] On Behalf Of Ann Fath
Sent: Monday, May 04, 2009 7:23 AM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: Re: [SERIALST] Electronic Usage Statistics

If ~on a regular basis~ a title was getting significant turn-aways, perhaps more than others were getting use, I'd investigate, even if we were canceling titles. I'd want to determine if that title might prove more useful to the community than existing ones, and cancel even more to add that one, if appropriate. I think it's very useful data to have regardless of the situation.
Ann

Ann Doyle Fath
Head of General Collections Cataloging
Research Library
Getty Research Institute
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100
Los Angeles CA 90049-1688

v: 310-440-7515
f: 310-440-7779
e: afath@getty.edu

>>>

From: "Williams, Mary Welch" <mwill108@UTMEM.EDU>
To:<SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU>
Date: 5/4/2009 6:58 AM
Subject: Re: [SERIALST] Electronic Usage Statistics
Since we're doing two HUGE cancellation projects in one year, turnaways
don't mean a thing to us.  We didn't ask for turnaways, just usage data.

Were we interested in expanding our collection turnaways would be
valuable.

Mary

-----Original Message-----
From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum
[mailto:SERIALST@list.uvm.edu] On Behalf Of Douglas LaFrenier
Sent: Friday, May 01, 2009 4:46 PM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: Re: [SERIALST] Electronic Usage Statistics

I've heard that other librarians do like to see "turnaway" data from
titles to
which they don't subscribe, since it indicates their users' interest in
non-subscribed content. Publishers, of course, like to see this
information for
marketing purposes. Of course, we're a small publisher in terms of the
number of
titles we produce, so this wouldn't represent a lot of lines of data for
us.

How do others feels about seeing usage (or attempted usage) of
nonsubscribed
content?

Thanks.

Douglas LaFrenier
Director, Publication Sales & Market Development
American Institute of Physics
2 Huntington Quadrangle
Melville, New York 11747
Phone: +1-516-576-2411
Fax: +1-516-576-2374

>>>
From: "Williams, Mary Welch" <mwill108@UTMEM.EDU>
To:<SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU>
Date: 5/1/2009 5:07 PM
Subject: Re: [SERIALST] Electronic Usage Statistics

Funny you should ask!  I'm in the midst of our second HUGE cancellation
process in less than a year.  I'm finding that publisher-supplied
statistics don't match the EMS, either.  However, for one of the
publishers we believe the discrepancy, (EMS is hugely greater than pub
stats) may be due to the pub requiring login instead of using IP
authentication.  We believe that users may be turned away from using the
publication, even though we have a page that supplies login information.
They've registered as a hit in the EMS because they clicked the local
link.  So for the EMS we're counting raw hits and not downloads.  We
expect that it will be somewhat larger.  That's as close as we can get
with our EMS, though.

We have a horrible time collecting statistics from publishers.  They
give us our downloads for all their titles, not just those to which we
subscribe.  It's not fun editing them.

We don't use Shibboleth.

Have a good weekend!!

Mary

-----Original Message-----
From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum
[mailto:SERIALST@list.uvm.edu] On Behalf Of Shipley, Tara N.
Sent: Friday, May 01, 2009 3:37 PM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: [SERIALST] Electronic Usage Statistics

Hello All,

Does anyone else experience problems collecting accurate usage
statistics for their electronic journals? We find that our statistics
from the publisher's website don't always match those of our e-resource
management system. What are your library's procedures for collecting
statistics (i.e., where do you get your statistics)? Does anyone use
Shibboleth?

Thanks in advance,

Tara Shipley
Manager, Library Services
University of Texas Medical Branch
Moody Medical Library
Serials Department
301 University Blvd.
Galveston, TX 77555-1035
phone: (409)772-2394 ; fax: (409)762-9782
email: tnshiple@utmb.edu<mailto:tnshiple@utmb.edu>