Knowing your users: the value of article database usage analysis

Abstract

ntroductionWhether and how often a publication has been read is a major concern for publishers, for a number of reasons. As library users now tend to search licensed online databases instead of scouting print materials on shelves, finding answers to this question is becoming easier. With the help of information technology, librarians can retrieve electronic resource usage data for assessment and decision-making. Usage data establishes how many times a particular article is downloaded, who the users are, and how they search within a database.Data analysis can help understand users' needs, develop strategies to work with them, and improve their search experience.This article analyzes the usage data of IEEE Xplore -a core online database in electrical engineering areas -at Texas A&M University. As the digital library of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), IEEE Xplore covers the organizations' major publications, including journals, proceedings, magazines, and standards. While its coverage includes other engineering disciplines, such as aerospace engineering, industrial engineering, and mechanical engineering, its focus is on electrical/electronic engineering, and computer science/engineering. Texas A&M University Libraries have maintained a full subscription to IEEE Xplore as one of their major electronic resources to support a large user population from related engineering departments. The vendor provides certain types of usage data through a statistics website which librarians can access. Literature reviewMany librarians and information professionals have showed great interest in usage data analysis. Baker and Read's survey of librariKnowing your users: the value of article database usage analysis 225

Usage Analysis of University of Manitoba Licensed Databases via EZproxy’s Logs

“…As a result, a database vendor can provide the number of searches but cannot answer questions like who made those searches. Even with the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) authentication, such as Shibboleth (Shibboleth, 2019), the user's attribute released to the database provider may only contain basic group information, such as faculty and student. Secondly, as library consortium becomes the trend in managing resources and negotiating licenses (Liu & Fu, 2018), member libraries in a consortium may lose statistical information about their usage.…”

Interlending and document supply: a review of the recent literature: 72

“…Although a long and thorough article on article usage, it does not address low and no use. There are plenty of figures on total use, title use, use per subject but nothing on the frequency distribution of articles used (Wan and Liu, 2010). Few people other than ILL librarians appear to be interested in low or no article use these days, even in Big Deals.…”