Counting on COUNTER

Despite the heavy involvement of publishers in Project COUNTER, most librarians are optimistic about the initiative—with a few caveats. "What they're doing is so important, it simply has to succeed," says Katina Strauch, head of collections at the College of Charleston, SC.

Just establishing definitions is tremendously important, according to Chuck Hamaker, associate university librarian at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Hamaker maintains a web site on e-resource usage at his university (library.uncc.edu/tech/stats/e-resourceusage.htm ) that graphically illustrates the wide variety of definitions employed by vendors as well as the different reporting formats.

For Bob Molyneux, the new director of statistics and surveys at the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, it's all about comparability. "The historic use of data is in decision-making," says Molyneux, but lack of definitions, and thus poor data about e-usage, has hindered librarians for years.

Publishers seem to fear that once good data has been established, it will be used to compare databases, but, to Hamaker, that would be like comparing apples and oranges. "We're interested in whether a specific database is serving the needs of our community—making comparisons from one year to another—and looking for some help in explaining why we're spending all this money."

While some criticize COUNTER for a modest start ("Whatever they do it will be picked apart," notes Strauch), for Molyneux that is the project's strength. "In the library field, we often try to hit a home run the first time. But it takes a while to create good data, and the COUNTER people know that." Molyneux is also impressed that COUNTER measures a small number of variables and includes a bottom-up function—opportunities for users to comment and for COUNTER "to find out what happens with the data." This is also, according to Molyneux, the first time that library data will ever be independently audited. Molyneux expects it to take several years for the definitions to be refined and the problems to work themselves out.

Will publishers be willing to share the data? "Publishers are now saying that they will give us useful data," one librarian says, "but we can't share it with each other—that's often in the contract. What's the use of that?" Many hope that improvements in both data and delivery methods will lead to greater transparency about pricing on the part of publishers.

"Eventually, we need to get aggregate data," says Molyneux, who wants statistics not just for a specific institution but on regional and state levels as well. This data will help librarians determine "what is the best way to insure that people are being informed and how we can best allocate our resources," Molyneux adds. As institutional-specific data are key for an acquisition librarian, aggregate data are necessary to support sound information policy.

Future directions for COUNTER should also include infrastructure data—more exact information about time, specific articles, or download formats such as PDF vs. HTML. "If we can measure how often an article is downloaded, then see it in footnotes in later articles, we can actually measure the effectiveness of the library. That's the Holy Grail," Molyneux says. While acknowledging the privacy issues involved, Molyneux explains that being able to measure the transfer of information would open up new areas of research with the potential to shape policy.

Hamaker acknowledges that receiving reports as a Microsoft Excel document is "a good beginning" but wants data in XML. "I don't have enough staff to control all the spreadsheets I have, and XML is the standard way to get output." Molyneux concurs, saying, "We should be constructing an XML infrastructure for all library data; it should be a standard for data interchange."

Any further recommendations for COUNTER? "Yes," concludes Hamaker, "there aren't nearly enough librarians involved. There have to be more librarians."