Collecting Usage Statistics for E-Government Resources
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The document discusses the challenges of collecting usage statistics for e-government resources, highlighting the lack of data on online document usage and the importance of tracking these statistics to maintain depository status. It outlines the GPO's PURL referral reporting tool for gathering data on PURL visits and local tracking methods to obtain more detailed statistics. The document also emphasizes the need for librarians to actively monitor PURL integrity and suggests local solutions for capturing user interactions with government documents through library catalog systems.
Collecting Usage Statistics for E-Government Resources
- 1. Collecting Usage Statistics for E-Government Resources Christopher C. Brown University of Denver, University Libraries cbrown@du.edu May 20, 2014 -- Online via GPO’s iCohere Platform
- 3. The Problem We have statistics for government documents print circulation • But our directors want statistics • The viability of our depository status may rest on our ability to provide statistics We don’t have any statistics for online usage
- 4. Statistics we don’t know Visits to online docs URLs by our users – we are clueless! How many times URLs are visited by our users What titles are visited by our users What agencies are most popular with our users We don’t know the whole picture
- 5. How Many PURLS? 142,117 records in CGP with PURLS (as of May 13, 2014). There are a total of 179,566 PURLS in the GPO PURL database (as of May 13, 2014) At present, GPO creates about 850 PURLS each month Source – James Mauldin, GPO
- 6. Part 1: GPO Solution
- 7. PURL Referral Reporting The tool also provides a listing of the top fifty (50) referred PURL resources per hostname and/or IP address with: The PURL path. The full path of the target URL for each PURL. The total requests for that individual PURL. A search link utilizing the CGP to view cataloging records for the individual PURL. GPO releases monthly PURL referral reports; however, these reports include aggregate totals only. Referrals totals strip out bot traffic and focuses on patron requests. The PURL Referral Reporting Tool is locked down to Federal depository libraries only. Data is current as of the previous day. Historical data is available for twelve months. Tool functionality may be expanded in the future to include greater historical data retention and additional functionality based on funding and community feedback. Source: http://www.fdlp.gov/23-about/projects/141-purl-enhancement-and- stabilization Since Dec. 1, 2010 the referral reporting system has been operational.
- 8. Steps to getting Custom Reports Gather the relevant hostnames or IP addresses for your institution – sites where you have PURLs Your library catalog (maybe you have two versions like we do – classic catalog, next-gen catalog Your web discover tool (if you have one) Your library instruction guides (like Libguides) Other Web pages that may contain PURLs Also consider using your institution’s numeric IP address Go to http://purlreferrals.fdlp.gov/ (You will need to login with your depository number and your internal password).
- 9. Run Your Query (login with Internal FDLP Credentials)
- 10. Results of Your Query
- 11. Top 50 Results
- 12. Export to CSV (Open with Excel)
- 13. You can See Exact Titles for Top 50
- 14. Older PURL Referrals http://www.fdlp.gov/file-repository/collection-management/purl-referrals You can get older PURL referral reports from here: Compare your hits against other depositories
- 15. PURL Rot In theory, it would be a wonderful world if someone behind a curtain at GPO would check every PURL every day to check for errors. But that does not happen. It is up to us – documents librarians – to report these.
- 16. PURL Rot: Reporting a Broken PURL
- 17. PURL Rot: Keeping Track
- 18. PURL Retrieval Summary You can get the total PURL hits by month, Or the top 50 most popular hits You cannot get all specific URLs. No way to do a more comprehensive analysis Statistics are ONLY for PURLS, not for any other online government URLs Statistics can be incomplete at times (GPO server down, etc.)
- 19. Part 2: Local Solutions
- 20. Objective To track online government document clickthroughs when accessed via the online catalog oNot possible to capture every use of government info by our users oBut is possible to capture all clickthroughs via the OPAC
- 21. Different Approaches GPO PURL Tracking Local URL Tracking Any PURL clickthrough from an institution Any URL clickthrough via the OPAC Broad view: top PURLS and overall numbers Narrow view: specific PURLS/URLS and then can derive titles, SuDocs, etc. Wait for GPO to aggregate data Instant access to data
- 22. Basic Idea: How it Works A URL is prepended to the PURL (or URL) This URL initially directs to a library-hosted web server which traps for the date/time, PURL (or URL), URL of requestor The user is then instantly redirected to the PURL (or URL) site
- 23. Two Methods to Track Locally Prepend to PURL Method #1: trap for the URL, date – more difficult at the end, but easier at first Method #2: trap also for a unique record number – more difficult at first, but benefits later
- 24. A Simple Prepend URL http://library.du.edu/clickthrough/index.php/clicks/?type=gov&url=
- 26. Benefits of Clickthrough Project We can provide meaningful stats to the library director We can see high-use and low-use areas We can tell if users benefit from our special projects We can do reactive URL maintenance We can see turn-aways and other problems We can see search engine attacks We can see how our docs work within your discovery tools
- 27. Local Use for Docs by FY
- 28. Specs: How to ask for a clickthrough system Project hosted on stable server (such as library Web server). Should be able to handle long URLs – up to 700 characters. Prepended URL sends request to library server. Included in prepended URL is cataloger-supplied 3-letter code of URL type (ex: gov, cou, ran – any 3-letter combination that may be needed in future). Server records date/time, IP address of requestor, 3-letter code of URL type, and URL requested. Server redirects user to desired URL. Reporting mechanism available to gather clickthroughs. Archiving function available to archive stats. Ability to view archived records. Secure login for authorized users. Just give this slide to a code-writer in your library – and you may have a link-tracking system soon!
- 29. Local Solutions to Problem http://www.fdlp.gov/file-repository/1051-tracking-online-document-usage-from-the-catalog
- 30. Further Reading
- 31. Questions? Christopher C. Brown University of Denver, University Libraries cbrown@du.edu