Hello, again. First, thanks to everyone who has responded so far, both on
the list and privately. Your input is much appreciated and I've gotten some
very good information that will help us see the overall picture.

Second, I would like to just take a moment to clear things up on one point:

"But I must say, my immediate reaction to your question was the thought that
you wanted to design your system so that the numbers would be acceptable to
your customers.  I'm sure that's not true, but the question seems very
strange and ... well, unscientific to me."

The above reply, along with a few others that were similar, caught me
off-guard. Please know that we are not attempting to design our own system
at this time; we are in discussions with vendors who are COUNTER-compliant
and will be providing reports based on that. The question that I asked in my
original post was, as I said, just one of those curiosity questions. While
we have had internal web activity reports for some time now, we have not had
any usage statistics that follow the COUNTER standards, nor have we been
able to look at usage by institution. The question came up in a recent
meeting and since I had no idea what librarians consider appropriate usage
levels, I just thought I woud put the question out there. It was more a
knowledge-gaining / learning question than anything. It has nothing to do
with what kind of system we end up going with or which vendor we choose.

I even received responses from a few of our subscribers, and I apologize for
any confusion my original question caused.
Thank you again for your valuable input.

---------------------------------------------------
Sharon Landers
Director of Circulation
Physicians Postgraduate Press, Inc.
PO Box 752870
Memphis TN 38175-2870
Phone: 901.273.2705
Fax: 901.273.2747
Email: sharonL@psychiatrist.com

-----Original Message-----
From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum
[mailto:SERIALST@list.uvm.edu] On Behalf Of Susan Wishnetsky
Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2009 9:27 AM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: Re: [SERIALST] usage statistics question

At 08:10 AM 2/3/2009, you wrote:
>Hello, everyone. I'm with a publisher of a medical journal. We're
>looking at the possibility of getting set up to provide online usage
>statistics reports to our institutional and library subscribers. We
>will more than likely go forward with this since the majority of our
>subscribers have requested this service. We are, in fact, in
>discussions with vendors now. One question that has come to mind, just
>out of curiosity, is what kind of usage do librarians expect. Do you
>consider usage of 10 times per month satisfactory? Or, would you
>consider usage of 50-75 times per month more reasonable? Obviously it
>depends on how small or large your particular facility is, but is there a
standard out there that most librarians follow?

It depends on more than the size of the facility.  There's cost, of course
-- an inexpensive journal might be worth keeping even if the usage is low.
Also, a small niche journal may well have low usage, but be essential
nevertheless.  For some titles, 10 uses a month is just fine.  For a big bad
Elsevier title, we might expect hundreds and hundreds.

But I must say, my immediate reaction to your question was the thought that
you wanted to design your system so that the numbers would be acceptable to
your customers.  I'm sure that's not true, but the question seems very
strange and ... well, unscientific to me.  SW

>Thanks in advance for your help. I haven't posted much, but each time I
>have, you've been more than willing to answer questions and help out
>when you can. I appreciate it!
>
>Regards,
>
>Sharon Landers
>Director of Circulation
>Physicians Postgraduate Press, Inc.
>PO Box 752870
>Memphis TN 38175-2870
>Phone: 901.273.2705
>Fax: 901.273.2747
>Email: sharonL@psychiatrist.com
>

Susan Wishnetsky
Electronic Resources Librarian
Galter Health Sciences Library
Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University
303 East Chicago Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60611-3008

(312) 503-9351
FAX (312) 503-1204
pasiphae@northwestern.edu