Welcome & Introductions

Todd Carpenter, Managing Director, NISO
biography

Aggregation and Analysis of Usage Data: A Structural, Quantitative Perspective

Johan Bollen, Staff Researcher, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Research Library
biography • presentation • print version
It's a common cliché that statistics is the superlative of lies. We need to prevent the introduction of similar expressions relating to usage statistics. Although applications of usage data are increasingly common, there remain significant issues related to quality assurance, standardization, and, in particular, appropriate methods of analysis. This opening plenary will provide a general overview of the main challenges involved in the recording, aggregation and analysis of usage data, and a path forward for this emerging domain. This discussion will be supported by a quantitative analysis of the experiences accumulated in the course of the MESUR project at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Usage Data: An Aggregator Perspective

John Law, Director, Strategic Alliances and Platform Management, ProQuest CSA
biography • presentation • print version
What role do content providers play in the creation and delivery of usage data to libraries? How does usage data affect their work practices, and how are they coordinating with libraries to provide the needed data? Hear from one perspective.

Sponsored by

Usage Data: Seeing the Full Picture

Kevin Cohn, Product Director, Atypon
biography • print presentation
It is easy to underestimate the power of numbers--to be swept away by the highs and discouraged by the lows. As usage data--particularly that included in COUNTER reports--becomes even more central to publishers and librarians, it is important to get down and dirty with the data and truly understand how your content is being used.

Lunch

Sponsored by

1:00 - 1:45 p.m.

From What to Why:
Electronic Resource Usage Data in Collection Development and User Behavior

Karen Coombs, Head of Web Services, University of Houston Libraries
biography • presentation • print version
For some time, libraries have wanted to use usage data to make collection development decisions about electronic resources. However, in recent years the way in which users access a library’s electronic resources has changed, expanding the importance of usage statistics from a collection development tool to a tool for examining and analyzing user behavior. This talk will discuss new types of usage statistics that libraries and vendors should consider examining to improve users interactions with electronic resources and the virtual library as a whole.

The MESUR Project: An Update from the Trenches

Johan Bollen, Staff Researcher, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Research Library
biography • presentation • print version
The MESUR project aims to survey a range of usage-based metrics of scholarly impact on the basis of a large-scale reference data set that combines usage, citation, and bibliographic data. We have now collected, loaded, and analyzed more than one billion usage events that originate from providers across the scholarly community. This presentation will discuss the practical and theoretical issues arising from this effort and the preliminary results of a survey of nearly 50 different metrics of scholarly impact.

Break

Sponsored by

3:15 - 4:00 p.m.

SUSHI & COUNTER

Oliver Pesch, Chief Strategist, E-Resources, EBSCO Information Services
biography • presentation • print version
This session will look at three standardization initiatives related to usage statistics: COUNTER; SUSHI (NISO's Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative) and a project sponsored by UKSG to create a "Usage Factor" for journals. The overview on COUNTER will be provide a brief history or the organization, review the current code of practice, update the status of the COUNTER audit and outline the expectations for upcoming releases. SUSHI is a standard that builds on the work of COUNTER by providing a mechanism for automating the harvesting reports. This session will provide some of the technical details on SUSHI. And finally, with more content being consumed in an online format, new opportunities present themselves for using usage data to evaluate and measure the impact of journals. The project by UKSG that is investigating a Usage Factor will be discussed.

4:00 - 4:45 p.m.

ScholarlyStats: How it Utilizes COUNTER and SUSHI Standards,
Questions Regarding Effective Use, and Future Strategic Plans for the Service

Tina Feick, Vice President, Customer Relations, Swets Information Services
biography • presentation • print version
Tina will examine how the ScholarlyStats service gathers usage data by utilizing the COUNTER and SUSHI standards. This will include a look at the SUSHI implementation between ScholarlyStats and other strategic partners. She will also address Swets' recent acquisition of ScholarlyStats and how it fits into Swets' strategy.

5:00-6:00 p.m.

Reception

Why Collect Data?

Colleen Cook, Dean of the Texas A&M University Libraries, Holder of the Sterling C. Evans Chair in Librarianship
biography • presentation • print version
Collecting data is one thing, but knowing what it will be used for and determining if it is truly answering your questions is a completely different story. Learn more about how to plan ahead when collecting usage data to ensure that the information you collect truly provides you with answers that can be used to better your services and collections.

Usage Statistics and Information Behaviors

John McDonald, Assistant Director, User Services & Technology Innovation, The Libraries of the Claremont Colleges
biography • presentation • print version
In this presentation, John will explain how he has used journal usage statistics to help understand information seeking and information usage behaviors of academic research scientists. He uses the work of David Ellis on information seeking behaviors and maps journal usage indicators to those behaviors.

Break

Sponsored by

Real World Data: Using Usage to Shape Libraries

Virginia Steel, University Librarian, University of California, Santa Cruz
biography • presentation • print version
How is usage data used in an institutional setting? What kinds of data carry the most weight with faculty and campus administrators? What kinds of data strengthen the library's case for stable or increasing support for collections, services, and facilities? This session will include discussion of approaches used at several libraries and will describe some of the successes and challenges of gathering and maintaining data.

Lunch

NISO Annual Meeting Luncheon

Todd Carpenter, Managing Director, NISO
biography • presentation

Sponsored by

Searching for Value in a Changing Research Environment:
What Data Do You Have and How Can You Use It?

Patricia Brennan, Product Development Manager, Thomson Scientific
biography • presentation • print version
Research today is fast paced, increasingly collaborative, highly competitive, and involves multiple formats in many venues. How do we assess value and ensure decisions are based on viable metrics and consistent data? What data best serve the needs of the key stakeholders the researcher, librarian, and publisher -- in their search of value? This discussion will look at the some of the traditional data available and how they might be used or combined with new sources and metrics tools to enable decision-making in support of the changing research environment.

From Shoeboxes to Mashups: ERMs and Decision Support

Tim Jewell, Director, Information Resources and Scholarly Communication, University of Washington Libraries
biography • presentation • print version
The dominance of the e-journal as the medium for transmitting scholarly articles has ushered in a new world of "data riches" for librarians, offering much-needed evidence for decision-making. COUNTER has helped bring some order to that new world, and the SUSHI protocol has shown how data can be easily ingested into the new E-Resource Management Systems and other applications that can help manage and combine it with other information. However, there has so far been relatively little public discussion of how libraries will want to make use of these data and other emerging metrics. This presentation will provide a perspective on and examples of the kinds of reports libraries want to support their collection development decision-making, and will point to the need for systems that can accommodate a variety of different data streams and offer flexible report-writing capabilities.

Putting Usage Data to Work:
ERM Systems Matching the Needs of Practitioners

Ted Fons, Product Manager, Innovative Interfaces, Inc.
biography • print presentation
A critical review of how well ERM systems are meeting the needs of decision makers in libraries. Some technical notes on large-scale harvesting of usage data and a view to the future of decision making with ERM systems.

Break

Sponsored by

"I'm sorry, we didn't know we wanted to know that !"
Building Frameworks of Organizational Intelligence

Joe Zucca, Director for Planning and Communication, University of Pennsylvania Libraries
biography • presentation • print version
The "data around us" typically live in various structured and partially structured forms and environments. To use them effectively in analysis and decision-making, we need to understand, leverage, and repurpose these structures. This presentation looks at one library's attempt to build flexible management information environments, with the goal of anticipating and responding to the organization's evolving need for intelligence.

4:15- 4:55 p.m.

Electronic Resource Usage Data: Defining a Complex Problem

Caryn Anderson, Doctoral Studies Program Manager, GSLIS, Simmons College
biography • presentation • print version
New! Usage Data wiki

The current processes for assessing the usage of electronic resources can be extremely complicated, time-consuming, and highly unsatisfactory. Attempts are being made by various commercial, nonprofit and independent institutions to design standardization or technological solutions to some of the problems. Articles and books are being written that analyze some of the components. And workshops are being conducted to discuss some of the issues and educate information managers about e-resource usage statistics. This forum will address many of the interconnected components that affect the measurement of e-resource usage. This final presentation will summarize the knowledge shared and developed over the two days as well as suggest an agenda for continuing to integrate and implement strategies for improving the collection, analysis and application of usage data.

Closing Remarks

Todd Carpenter, Managing Director, NISO
biography