When there is no Vendor: Statistics for Free Clickthroughs via the Online Catalog

1. Christopher C. Brown: Reference Librarian / Government Documents
Librarian, University of Denver, Penrose Library
cbrown@du.edu
WHEN THERE IS NO VENDOR: STATISTICS FOR
FREE CLICKTHROUGHS VIA THE ONLINE
CATALOG

2. ABSTRACT
 We know about COUNTER; we're familiar with SUSHI. But who has
statistics for patron access to free resources? [crickets chirping here].
Learn how to track clickthroughs and make use of these statistics in
decision-making. Instructions will be provided so that anyone can
implement this in their online catalog.
 The University of Denver has been tracking clickthrough statistics to free
resources for over eight years. First we implemented it for US federal
documents, then for all other free resources including Colorado State
publications, Rand publications, National Academies Press, Google
Scholar, Hathi Trust, and many others. I will describe the technology (a
URL prepend in the 856 field of the catalog records), show statistical
patterns over the years, and point to collection and space-allocation
decisions coming out of these statistics. Rather than providing exact
code, I will provide a list of specifications that can be given to those write
the code so that other libraries can benefit from these statistics.

3. THE PROBLEM
 Vendor stats as apples and oranges
reports
 Catalogs increasingly including “free”
Internet resources, such as US
government documents and other free
resources

4. AN ERM CAN PROVIDE FURTHER ANALYSIS

5. 50% OF OUR CATALOG RECORDS CONTAIN
LINKS TO ONLINE CONTENT
12.9%
Records with no
vender – these
Non-docs
are the records
we are tracking! 50.0%
Govdocs
37.1%
DU catalog records DU catalog records
with Internet link with no Internet link

6. URL GROWTH IN GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF DENVER
URLs in the OPAC: Docs and non-docs

7. CURRENT DOCS – ALL ONLINE
OLDER DOCS – MANY ONLINE

8. STATISTICS WE NOW KNOW
 Documents Received
 Circulation Statistics (from our ILS reports)
 GPO PURL Referral Statistics (see
http://www.fdlp.gov/component/docman/cat_view/178-collection-management/249-purl-
referrals for individual library statistics; see also http://fdlp.gov/collections/building-
collections/618-purl-referrals-reporting for discussion of recent issues)

9. STATISTICS WE DON’T KNOW
 Visits to online docs URLs by our users – we
are clueless!
 How many times URLs are visited by our
users
 What titles are visited by our users
 What agencies are most popular with our
users
 We don’t know the whole picture

10. WE ARE TRACKING:
 U.S. Government Documents
 Colorado State Documents
 ERIC Documents
 Other Free Items, such as RAND, United
Nations, Human Rights Watch, Making of
America, National Academies Press, and
Wright American Fiction

11. WHY WE NEED URL STATISTICS
 Justify our depository status to administrators
 Assist with item selections
 GPO cannot provide them
 URL maintenance
 “Knowing where they’re going” is always
helpful

12. WHY STATISTICS ARE DIFFICULT TO GATHER
 Not all government URLs are PURLed
 In 2004 I counted over 1,400 servers hosting
government documents to which our catalog
pointed. We can’t expect 1,400 sites to
provide us statistics.

13. GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS ON MULTIPLE
SERVERS
 Over 1,400 servers (Web sites) deliver US federal government e-
content.
 They don’t provide usage statistics. 0.2%
1.2%
2.4% 2.0% 0.1%
2.9%
4.1% gov
edu
org
com
net
mil
us
numeric
87.2%
Data from: Brown, Christopher C. 2004. “Knowing Where They’re Going: Statistics for Online Government
Document Access through the OPAC.”Online Information Review 28 (6), 396-409.
DOI: 10.1108/14684520410570526

14. OUR SOLUTION: A LOCAL TRACKING SYSTEM

15. THE URL PREFIX IS APPENDED BEFORE THE URL/PURL
OLD SYSTEM: COLDFUSION

16. STATS ARE LOGGED, AND USER IS REDIRECTED
TO DESIRED URL

17. WE HAD TO STOP USING COLDFUSION SERVER IN
2010 – HAD TO REDO OUR PROCESS
NEW SYSTEM: PHP
http://library.du.edu/clickthrough/index.php/clicks/?type=gov&url=

18. NEW PHP SYSTEM

19. AN ACCESS DATABASE IS USED TO MANAGE THE
PROJECT STATS

20. TRACKING CLICKTHROUGHS SINCE 2003

21. CLICKTHROUGHS IN RELATION TO NUMBER OF
RECORDS
Fiscal Year Total Docs Bib Recs Bib Recs with URLs Clickthroughs to Docs
FY2004 358,215 43,307 3,809
FY2005 373,200 55,508 4,504
FY2006 388,610 62,374 4,686
FY2007 401,454 103,021 5,217
FY2008 429,122 159,543 6,342
FY2009 711,315 463,121 7,660
FY2010 860,346 594,431 7,921
FY2011 898,092 626,570 7,442

22. BENEFITS OF CLICKTHROUGH PROJECT
1. We can provide meaningful stats to the
library director
2. We can see high-use and low-use areas
3. We can tell if users benefit from our special
projects
4. We can do reactive URL maintenance
5. We can see turnaways and other problems
6. We can see search engine attacks

23. 1. PROVIDING MEANINGFUL STATS

24. 1. PROVIDING MEANINGFUL STATS
 Older Docs Content Gets Visits
FY04 FY05 FY06 FY07 FY08 FY09
Total Clicks 3809 4504 4686 5217 6342 7660
Up to 10 years 3542 4155 4170 4369 4996 5600
percent 93.0% 92.3% 89.0% 83.7% 78.8% 73.1%
Over 10 years 267 349 516 848 1346 2060
percent 7.0% 7.7% 11.0% 16.3% 21.2% 26.9%

25. 1. PROVIDING MEANINGFUL STATS
Comparison of Online Access with Physical Circulation of
Documents

26. 2. HIGH-USE AREAS BY AGENCY

27. 2. HIGH-USE AREAS BY SUDOCS

28. 3. SPECIAL PROJECT USAGE
Project URL Count Coverage Dates Tracking Time Span URL Unique % Unique
Clicks URL Accessed
Clicks
Topographic Maps 456 1991 – 2001 Sept. 2003 – June 2009 101 76 16.6%
NASA Technical Reports 24,825 1976 – 2001 April 2007 – June 2009 310 263 1.06%
GAO Reports (older) 9,559 1976 – 1999 Aug. 2007 – June 2009 184 161 1.68%
LexisNexis Digital 57,200 1850 – 1995 July 2007 – June 2009 1027 851 1.49%
Hearings/Committee Prints
Readex Digital Serial Set 248,134 1817 – 1948 Sept. 2008 – June 2009 239 205 0.08%
OSTI Reports 19,901 2002 – 2006 July 2008 – June 2009 476 375 1.88%

29. 4. REACTIVE URL MAINTENANCE
 Two approaches: Proactive approach
 My approach: Reactive approach – with
nearly half-a-million docs URLs in our
OPAC, we can’t afford to be proactive.
Error rate
FY Clicks Errors Rate
FY04 3809 202 5.30%
FY05 4504 231 5.13%
FY06 4686 299 6.38%
FY07 5217 217 4.16%
FY08 6342 179 2.82%
FY09 7660 177 2.31%
FY10 1542 38 2.46%

30. IT IS IMPORTANT TO REPORT BROKEN PURLS TO GPO.
THEY ARE REPAIRED VERY QUICKLY.

31. 5. TURNAWAY PROBLEMS
STOPGAP: PURL RECORD AMENDED
 “Direct access to online version”

32. 6. SEARCH ENGINE ATTACKS
 CUIL (http://www.cuil.com/) CUIL attacked many OPACs – at least Millennium OPACs. We were
attacked two times. Our project uncovered the attacks!
 August, 2007 and February, 2008
 The CUIL clickthroughs were subsequently omitted from the project stats

33. A BIT OF ANALYSIS – US GOVERNMENT DOCS

34. ANALYSIS, CONT.

35. ANALYSIS, CONT.

36. SPECS FOR THE NEW DU CLICKTHROUGH
SYSTEM
Give these specs to a systems person, and see if you can make this happen!
 Project hosted on stable server (such as library Web server).
 Should be able to handle long URLs – up to 700 characters.
 Prepended URL sends request to library server.
 Included in prepended URL is cataloger-supplied 3-letter
code of URL type (ex: gov, cou, ran – any 3-letter
combination that may be needed in future).
 Server records date/time, IP address of requestor, 3-letter
code of URL type, and URL requested.
 Server redirects user to desired URL.
 Reporting mechanism available to gather clickthroughs.
 Archiving function available to archive stats.
 Ability to view archived records.
 Secure login for authorized users.

37. FOR MORE INFORMATION:
“Adding URLs in Bulk at the University of Denver.” Presentation given at the Spring 2002 Depository
Library Council Meeting, 24 April 2002, Mobile, AL. View PoierPoint presentation:
http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/pubs/proceedings/02spc.html
“Statistics for Online Document Use.” Presentation given at the Fall 2003 Depository Library
Conference, 22 October 2003, Arlington, VA. Published in the Proceedings of the 12th Annual
Depository Library Conference, Oct. 19-22, 2003.
Brown, Christopher C. 2004. “Knowing Where They're Going: Statistics for Online Government
Document Access through the OPAC”. Online Information Review 28 (6), 396-409. DOI:
10.1108/14684520410570526
“Local Access Statistics for Federal Documents: Tracking Web Page and Online Catalog Usage.”
Presentation given with Susan Xue at the Fall 2004 Depository Library Conference, 20 October
2004, Washington, DC. Published in the Proceedings of the 13th Annual Depository Library
Conference, Oct. 17-20, 2004. [view]
“Enhancing NASA Fiche Records with Links to Online Content.” Presentation given at the Fall 2007
Depository Library Conference, 17 October 2007, Arlington, VA. [view]
“Tracking Online Document Usage from the Catalog: Experiences from the Field.” Presentation
given with Stephanie Braunstein, Susan Kendall, Liza Weisbrod, Jennifer Gerke, and Shane Cole at
the Fall 2009 Depository Library Conference, 19 October 2009, Arlington, VA [view].
Brown, Christopher C. 2011. “Knowing Where They Went: Six Years of Online Statistics via the
OPAC for Federal Government Information.”College & Research Libraries 72 (1), 43-61.
http://sites.google.com/site/librariancorner/url-clickthrough-project

38. QUESTIONS?
 Contact: Christopher C. Brown – “Chris”
 cbrown@du.edu