[WEB4LIB] Databases and Statistics

[Julia Schult]

There's a project working on this:

http://www.albany.edu/~imlsstat/

Among other things, check out their links to "Related Resources" which points
to several articles including
the PLA Technote: Electronic Statistics "Counting Electronic Crows" at
http://www.pla.org/technotes/electronicstats.html

I mentioned this problem in the paper I gave at National Online, and had one
particular slide in which I showed our statistics for several databases,
which shows some but not all of the discrepancies in their reporting
(#searches, #sessions, #minutes, #documents/views/whatever). You can find my
ppt slides on the www.infotoday.com site under this year's NOM presentation
links, or I can send anyone a snapshot of the chart if you're interested.

As far as I know, there is industry pressure toward regularlizing the
reporting by the vendors, but no other solutions to date.

I don't think you could have a "generic" time spent in a database, because
full-text vs. citation databases and databases in different fields are used
very differently.  The Infotrac products report average session times, but I
don't know about any of the others.  (Maybe MARCIVE.)

Kathryn Miller wrote:

> Web4lib,
>
> Comparing and contrasting databases is challenging.
>
> Can anyone recommend an article on evaluating the different statistical
> measures provided by the database companies?
>
> Specifically, does anyone know if an average amount of time per database
> search has been identified?  I am hoping for a generic number that can be
> applied to several different databases. :)
>
> Thanks.
>
> --
> Kathryn Miller
> Coordinator of Electronic Resources
> National Louis University, Evanston Campus
> 847-475-1100 x2850
> kmil at evan1.nl.edu

--
---Julia E. Schult
Access/Electronic Services Librarian
Elmira College
Jschult at elmira.edu