LibInsight with COUNTER r5: Ahead of the E-Data Curve

Our previous blog post outlined all the amazing new features coming to your Springshare tools. But one of these features is so big and important that it needs its own post – support for COUNTER 5 reports in LibInsight.

E-Mazing, riiiggght? 🙂

Before we dive into this awesome functionality, let’s start with the basics.

 

What is COUNTER r5 and what’s the difference between r4 and r5?

R5 of the COUNTER Code of Practice represents the 5th release of COUNTER – the standard for counting the use of electronic resources. COUNTER r5 requires content providers to deliver reports in Release 5 formats starting with January 2019 usage.

COUNTER Release 5 contains several metric types, different than the metric types available in Release 4.

• Usage Metrics:
  • Investigations – Measure an expression of interest in a content item or title.
    • I.e. a patron viewing an article abstract would count as an investigation.
  • Request – Measure access to a content item or title.
    • I.e., a patron downloading an e-journal article or e-book chapter.
• Searches Metrics:
  • Contains four different types of search metrics from searches_regular to searches_platform.
• Access Denials Metrics:
  • This new metric has two different types to account for user denial — lack of institutional access and simultaneous users maximum has been reached.

These new metric types provide several new measurement tools of your e-resource usage.

LibInsight is Ahead of the E-Data Curve

We’re a small crew but we live and breathe library software so we took it upon ourselves to make LibInsight one of the first software platforms to support Counter r5 analysis.

If our libraries need it, we’ll have it – that’s our motto.

What does this mean for you?

New E-Resources / COUNTER 5 Dataset is Available in LibInsight!

Navigate to your LibInsight system > create new dataset > select E-Resources / COUNTER 5 to create your new r5 dataset.

Because the new r5 reports are material-type agnostic, you can combine reports from e-journals, databases, and even e-book usage in one place.

New LibInsight Reporting Metrics

Additionally, you’ll notice a few changes to the display in reports, to better match the data provided by COUNTER r5.

Specifically, the new LibInsight dataset will no longer show data by searches, sessions, and downloads. Per the above new metrics, data will be reported about investigations, requests, searches, and access denied. The table also shows you the number of databases, eBooks and journals in your e-resources. Toggle  these columns to manipulate the table display however you’d like!

LibInsight automagically calculates the cost-per-usage saving your e-resources librarian loads of time…. all in easy to download csv or pdf reports.

You Asked For It… Access Denied Reporting!

With the new r5 dataset, we’re happy to announce new Access Denied reporting! This way, you can view patron requests to data where access was denied due to lack of institutional access or simultaneous licenses maximum was exceeded. This is extremely valuable data when deciding to purchase a new resource or expand the licensing for current resources.

Which r5 Reports Does LibInsight Support?

Right out of the gate, LibInsight supports the Platform (PR) Master Report, the Database (DR) Master Report, and the Titles (TR) Master Report.

Because we’re supporting all the Master-level reports, you don’t have to worry about which ‘view’, for example Title Report view 1 or Database Report view 1, you might need. We’re taking all the guesswork out of the equation by gathering all of the data via the Master Reports. By supporting the Master-level reports, we are, by default, supporting just about everything that has to do with COUNTER r5 reporting. Talk about efficiency for the win!

Importing Reports Just Got a Whole Lot Easier!

To make things even easier for librarians, the new LibInsight Dataset now has several automated features to make it even easier for you to get started.

1. Importing Platforms from another dataset.

Most likely, you’re already using the the current E-Resources/Databases (r4) dataset in LibInsight and you’ve spent time creating all your platforms in there. Rather than recreating those platforms, we provide an easy import option to import the platform names/titles into the new r5 dataset.

 

2. Importing Reports Via Required SUSHI Fetching

We totally get how you can get spreadsheet-fatigue. You’re dealing with hundreds of spreadsheets across tons of vendors for different date ranges. It can be exhausting. To make things easier, the COUNTER r5 builds in automation from the start, with SUSHI. LibInsight supports fetching a single file at a time, or you can schedule harvesting monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or annually. This way, you can set it up, schedule the harvesting, and forget about it…. until you need to analyze your data, of course. 😉

And, we added notification features – so when scheduling future SUSHI harvesting, you can choose up to three users to be notified via email when the fetch is complete and the data has been added to your dataset.

Test Your SUSHI Harvesting… Before You Harvest.

We’re always so grateful to our community for the incredible feedback they provide us, and this specific piece of feedback deserves virtual cookies to all that sent it in… calorie-free, of course.

When setting up an e-resource for SUSHI Harvesting, we now offer the ability to test the harvest first. This way, if you’ve entered the wrong API key or the requestor ID is not formatted correctly, you’ll know right away instead of 3-months from now when you try and run your first scheduled fetch.

Plus, if something isn’t formatted correctly – we’ll provide on-screen instructions to help you correct it.

We’re Looking for Your Feedback… Always.

Because r5 is so new and LibInsight is one of the first data-analysis tools to offer r5 support, we need to hear from you on how you need the new E-Resources / COUNTER 5 dataset to function.

Please send along your feedback, thoughts, comments, and ideas (and virtual cookies too, Springy Carrie is always hungry) and we’ll work on incorporating your feedback into future updates.