Oliver Pesch

Library Standards and E-Resource Management: A Survey of Current Initiatives and Standards Efforts

ABSTRACT The article “ONIX, Z and JWP: Library Standards in a Digital World,” which appears in volume 53, number 4 of The Serials Librarian, provides a detailed look at library standards and places them in the context of the e-journal lifecycle. The talk given at “Black Cats & Broken Links: Dispelling E-resource Superstitions,” Mississippi State Universitys Seventh Annual E-resource Workshop, was a presentation of that article. Rather than duplicate the details of the aforementioned article, this presentation write-up provides a brief overview of the topic.

SUSHI: simplifying the delivery of usage statistics

In 2005, SUSHI became the latest buzzword in the library community. This article (and this kind of SUSHI) refers to usage data, not raw fish. The growth of online collections has resulted in libraries demanding that publishers provide detailed usage data to allow them to better manage their collections and purchases. The Project COUNTER Code of Practice was created in response to this need; however, it did not address the painstaking task of collection and management of the usage data. SUSHI is a new protocol developed to allow for automated retrieval of COUNTER usage reports from publishers and other content providers.

Perfecting COUNTER and SUSHI to Achieve Reliable Usage Analysis

The Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources (COUNTER) Code of Practice and Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) are two standards whose successful adoption will greatly assist librarians in performing accurate and timely usage analysis of their online collections and thus make more informed collection management decisions. Variations in how these standards have been applied by content providers to their SUSHI and COUNTER implementation are currently impacting their widespread adoption. The standards themselves are not broken—what is needed is concise guidelines on their implementation. This column reviews some of the roadblocks that impede consistent implementation of these standards as well as proposes recommendations that could form the basis of a community profile for these standards.

E-Resource Standards You Should Know About

Successful implementation of standards like Shared E-Resource Understanding (SERU), Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources (COUNTER), Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI), and I2 (Institutional Identifiers) can simplify and improve your ability to manage your e-resources. Other initiatives like the Journal Usage Factor, EigenFactor™, and Metrics from Scholarly Usage of Resources (MESUR) are envisioned to become the basis for future tools to evaluate the impact of scholarly information. This article will provide a brief survey of current and future standards and initiatives related to e-resources and discuss why they should matter to you.

Implementing SUSHI and COUNTER: : A primer for librarians

Project Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources (COUNTER) released its first code of practice in 2002. Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) was introduced in 2007 as a way of automating the harvesting of COUNTER reports. Both initiatives have been well adopted yet there is still confusion about how to implement SUSHI. This column offers a primer for library staff wanting to take advantage of the benefits of SUSHI. It starts with a quick review of both COUNTER and SUSHI, then covers options for SUSHI clients, examines SUSHI configuration requirements, demonstrates how to use SUSHI to obtain a COUNTER report and shows an example of working with a COUNTER Journal Reports in Extensible Markup Language (XML) format to create a spreadsheet with a simple cost-per-use and package analysis. By the end the reader should gain enough knowledge to configure a SUSHI client, successfully harvest COUNTER statistics and to perform some basic analysis on that usage.

Simplifying Usage Statistics: What's Next for SUSHI

Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) is the key to automating the harvesting of Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources (COUNTER) usage statistics. Whether librarians are aware of it or not, SUSHI is a critical standard for measuring and monitoring the use of library online collections, eliminating hours of painstaking effort that would otherwise be required to locate, retrieve, and load usage reports. However, needs are evolving and standards like SUSHI need to evolve too. In this column I will examine some of the challenges facing SUSHI and how the National Information Standards Organization SUSHI Standing Committee is proactively addressing the challenges with its effort to develop a more flexible and easier-to-implement version of SUSHI.

Improving OpenURL Linking

Ever since OpenURL linking was introduced in 2000 by Herbert van de Sompel the link resolver has played an important role in providing users with access to the online resources they have rights to. From the start, one of the criticisms of OpenURL linking has been that it is not 100% successful—sometimes the user is presented with a link to full text, but that link fails. In 2010 a new National Information Standards Organization (NISO) workgroup was created to tackle the issue of OpenURL quality. This column will discuss this NISO initiative and look in detail at the proposed “Completeness Index” that promises a means of measuring the quality of OpenURLs being submitted by various content providers. The article will also discuss how some OpenURL quality issues may be more perception than reality and how librarians can configure their links and link resolvers to overcome these negative perceptions.

COUNTER: Looking Ahead to Release 5 of the COUNTER Code of Practice

ABSTRACT Since its first Code of Practice was published in 2003, setting the first international standard for reporting usage of scholarly content, Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources (COUNTER) has been continually refining the code of practice to meet the evolving needs of its library, publisher, and vendor membership. The latest release of the Code of Practice went into effect in early 2014 and introduced several improvements over the prior releases. Work is now underway on Release 5 of the COUNTER Code of Practice with a promise that it will provide further improvements to better report on usage of scholarly information in an ever-changing discovery and access environment. This column discusses current challenges and how Release 5 might address them.

Using BIBFRAME and Library Linked Data to Solve Real Problems: An Interview with Eric Miller of Zepheira

ABSTRACT In 2011 the Library of Congress commissioned the development of the next generation of machine-readable cataloging. The result of that effort was the Bibliographic Framework Initiative (BIBFRAME), which employed linked data and Semantic Web technologies to provide the basis for the future of bibliographic description. Some people are optimistic about the potential of BIBFRAME, others view BIBFRAME as an interesting experiment with an element of uncertainty as to its practical application, and still others are less optimistic about its prospects. To get a clearer picture of BIBFRAME and its true potential, we contacted Eric Miller, a founding father of Semantic Web technologies, a member of the original BIBFRAME team and president of Zepheira, a company that helps libraries increase their visibility on the open web. This column is a conversation with Eric in which we discuss the past, present and future of BIBFRAME and library linked data, including some success stories.

ONIX-PL License Encoding Project

ONIX for Publication License (ONIX-PL) was introduced in 2006 with great hope that it would simplify the licensing and license management aspects of e-resource management. However, after several years this standard has not seen significant commercial adoption. Believing this standard still holds promise, the National Information Standards Organization, with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and support from Jisc and EDItEUR, has launched the ONIX-PL License Encoding Project. The goal of the project is to accelerate adoption by creating and making publicly available a set of publisher licenses encoded to the ONIX-PL standard. In this column we provide more details on the project, its goals, challenges, and prospects.