[WEB4LIB] Historian software

[Jule' Ketcham]

Karen,
About two years ago when I was working for another institution I purchased
both Fortres and Historian from Fortres Grand Corp. (www.fortres.com).
Fortres worked very well for our public access Windows 95 machines, but
Historian fell so far short in functionality that it was removed from our
test computer and never installed on our other machines.

I had hoped that we could track usage for our subscription databases and the
amount of time patrons used those databases, but the software failed
utterly. Can't remember all details but I do remember that Historian was
clunky and unwieldy, and we looked elsewhere for statistics gathering
software. I would hope that this product has undergone substantial upgrading
since then and that perhaps now it works as billed.

*********************************
Jule' Marie Ketcham, Librarian
jmketcham at cerritos.edu
Cerritos College
11110 Alondra Blvd.
Norwalk, CA 90650-6298
(562)860-2451 ext. 2415
http://library.cerritos.edu



> -----Original Message-----
> From: web4lib at webjunction.org
> [mailto:web4lib at webjunction.org]On Behalf Of Karen G. Schneider
> Sent: Thursday, December 09, 1999 4:53 PM
> To: Multiple recipients of list
> Subject: [WEB4LIB] Historian software
>
>
> I coulda swore I posted on this two days ago, but response has
> been nil and
> I don't see the message.  If I overlooked it, I apologize for repeating
> myself.
>
> Does anyone out there have experience with the software program Historian
> (published by the Fortres company)?  I'm particularly interested
> in how well
> Historian tracks all types of computer use, is it network-friendly, what
> does it consider a user, and how it exports data.  I am also interested in
> alternative software. (For our intranet and extranet, we are relying on
> Webtrends to give us a picture of "user sessions," however
> not-quite-accurate it may be... however, we provide access to other tools,
> such as word processing, which we do not have data on.)
>
> The *reason* I am investigating this is that Historian was
> mentioned by name
> in a memo discussing measuring user sessions for a possible new
> state report
> statistical area.  I was asked to comment on this report, and would have
> anyway. I'm all for electronic measurement, and think that shaky data is
> better than no data at all, but before thousands of libraries
> dash out in a
> panic to purchase this software, I'd like to do more background
> investigation, from Them What Knows.
>
> Karen G. Schneider kgs at bluehighways.com
> Assistant Director of Technology
> Shenendehowa Public Library, Clifton Park, NY
> http://www.shenpublib.org
>