[WEB4LIB] how to count the number of visits to an e-title

[Thomas Dowling]

Steven Zhou wrote:

> The USPTO library is developing a web page (for the Intranet behind 
> the PTO firewall) holding about 3,000 e-journals and e-books. My 
> supervisor asked me if I can set up a counter to track the number of 
> visits to each of the titles on the page. I will appreciate it if 
> anyone on the net can give me some inputs about it. Thanks.
>

This has popped up a few times, and you may find details in the W4L archive.

You only get to log hits on your server, so the trick is to create a 
script on your server that serves as the target of links from these 
pages and does an HTTP redirect so the user end up at the correct 
location (not a meta redirect, not a javascript redirect.  Make sure the 
script is created, and linked to, in such a way that you can tell from 
its appearances in your web logs where the user was sent to.

Of course, people will follow your links to their favorite journal once, 
bookmark the site, and never show up in your logs again.  Oh well, all 
web usage stats are a polite fiction.


Thomas Dowling
tdowling at oholink.edu