From: <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 3 May 2012 17:48:55 +0000
Apologies for coming to this so late, but I have been following this
string from a distance (up a mountain, to be precise) and would like
to share some thoughts now that I'm back.
OECD is not seeing a decline in usage, in fact, quite the reverse. In
March 2012 we delivered 500,000 downloads, 43% higher than March 2011.
This is not a one-off month, we had similar numbers throughout the
first quarter and saw strong growth in 2011 too.
We can attribute about 10% of this growth to having more subscribers
but the number of titles published has not changed, so underlying
usage is strongly up. This trend is not new: downloads have grown
tenfold since 2005.
What's driving this?
Judging by the data we can analyse there is no one single factor,
downloads are spread very evenly across our catalogue and traffic
comes from a wide variety of sources. We see the following factors
behind our growth:
1. a new publishing platform (OECD iLibrary, using Publishing
Technology's pub2web system) was introduced during 2009-2010. It is
far more Google-friendly and user-friendly than its predecessor.
2. a highly granular approach to publishing books (we are mainly a
book publisher) whereby each book is presented online both as a
complete downloadable work and as separate chapters and, for many
titles, with each graphic and table presented separately too (with
downloadable spreadsheets). Each of these separate items has its own
homepage, is citable and is therefore discoverable by search engines
independently.
3. topicality: we've noticed for some years that demand for our energy
titles moves in line with the price of oil (the higher the price, the
more the demand for these titles - and vice versa!); we believe that
the current economic crisis is having a similar demand-driving effect
on our economics and social issues content.
4. improved metadata management: among which we now offer downloadable
MARC records (not perfect, we know, but many librarians are using
them)
5. more discovery and usage-driving efforts: this includes pushing our
metadata and content to discovery platforms like Repec, Scribd and
Google Books.
6. increased media efforts: including non-traditional media. For
example, a recent book on the environment was picked up by Ars
Technica (a Conde Nast title) and we recorded more than 1000 incoming
links from that one article.
7. increased social media efforts: we are tweeting more often and
finding that Facebook is now sending us a measurable amount of traffic
(~3%).
If there is one lesson, it's that publishers have to try and get many
things right: from the underlying technology, to the way one presents
content online, from providing help and services to librarians, to
promotion/usage-driving work - as well as publishing content that's
relevant for users!
Toby Green
Head of Publishing, OECD
-----Original Message-----
From: Andree Rathemacher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2012 07:02:38 -0400
While there are many ways to measure usage and many problems with each
(and questions about what usage "really means"), I assume that Ann was
asking about Counter-compliant stats, which is what most libraries and
publishers have been gathering for years.
Even if the Counter stats themselves have some problems, trends would
nonetheless be meaningful since there is a standard methodology for
collecting Counter-compliant usage statistics.
Andree Rathemacher
Univ of RI
On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 8:29 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> From: Nawin <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2012 20:23:44 -0500
>
> With so many different ways to access content, what do the usage statistics
> that started this discussion thread include? Obviously, the primary journal
> site, but what about aggregators, secondary collections, institutional
> repositories, authors' personal sites, and . . . .? And, yes, A&I services
> and "to the degree that large-scale full-text searching and textmining is
> enabled." In the age of information proliferation, Cliff Notes versions and
> discovery tools prevail!
>
> Nawin Gupta
> Informed Publishing Solutions, Inc.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: "Skib, Bryan" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2012 16:30:40 +0000
>
> What counts as use?
>
> For reading, there would have to be leveling off unless campus enrollments
> and staffing increase. How much can one person consume in this manner?
> Expansion of access to alumni or the general public would of course change
> the demographics. Further, the max number of uses will be distributed across
> an ever larger body of materials, competing for attention. The percent of
> older material that continues to see use should be higher for digital than
> for print, given ease of access.
>
> Will aggregate collection management and demand-driven acquisition
> strategies reduce the portion of our collections that never see use?
> Will restrictions on resource sharing reduce the external use of what we
> choose to license?
>
> If the question is about use of online reference works and A&I services,
> users may well prefer other tools.
>
> Higher portions of the content might see a different form of use to the
> degree that large-scale full-text searching or textmining is enabled.
>
> My local picture strikes me as mixed, with continued (but slowing) growth in
> use -- and yet I hesitate to jump to conclusions since
> (overall) we are not always comparing apples to apples, or counting the same
> things in the same way.
>
> Bryan Skib
> Associate University Librarian for Collections
> University of Michigan
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