CRIV BLOG

Librarians have been requesting usage statistics from vendors since electronic databases became prevalent among research tools.  While the cooperation of legal vendors to supply figures still varies somewhat, there appears to be a trend toward providing the information.  Last May, CRIV Blog asked why legal vendors have been slow to become COUNTER Compliant.  The list of vendors currently registered can be found at this web site.  Some prominent vendors of legal databases and library services are registered, including: Berkeley Electronic Press, de Gruyter, Cambridge University Press, Gale Cengage, OCLC, Oxford University Press, ProQuest, Taylor & Francis Online, and Thomson Reuters, though some have not yet undergone audits for 2011 or 2012.

            For the librarian, the upcoming AALL session at the annual meeting, A1: Making Sense of the Numbers: Understanding Vendor Statistics, should help us use these statistics to build and maintain collections.  For an interesting take on how collecting electronic statistics may benefit vendors, visit the Krafty Librarain blog to review the entry, Usage Stats: Are They a Double Edged Sword?