RE: Usage data/license etc.

["Kathy Perry" <kperry@gmu.edu>]

Chuck et al,

I'm responding to this email message against my better judgment since I
fear I will be deluged with emails, but my better self wants to share the
possibility of an answer to your question.

For those of you who don't know, ACS stats arrive by individual IP address
for each of the 29 or so journals.  For a consortium of more than 50
subscribing schools, this is really unmanageable; VIVA's quarterly reports
are excel files of over 400 pages - too much to print and too much to
eyeball.  For a consortium of our size but with no in-house technical
staff (and especially one where the director is definitely the dimmest
technicological banana in the bunch), this report is next to worthless.

VIVA has developed a little program to run through the stats.  It does 2
things:  matches IP addresses with names of schools (in English) and then
wipes out the pages and pages of zero hits (by individual IP address).
You're left with a short and succinct report you can understand.  I've
shared it with CDL and they seem to think it would work for them.  It does
require you to build and maintain the IP table for your schools. I don't
know if this program would be useful for an individual school whose report
might be manageable, but I think it definitely would be useful for
consortia.

VIVA actually paid money (!) to a local programmer to do this little task
and the programmer and I are willing to give it to them.  I plan to share
it with ACS and have them generalize it to make it available to all
subscribers.

Rather than deluge me with emails, please deluge your ACS sales reps.

Numerically yours,
Kathy

Katherine A. Perry
VIVA Director
703/993-4652
703/993-4662 (fax)
kperry@gmu.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu]On Behalf Of Hamaker,
Chuck
Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2002 5:19 PM
To: Liblicense-L (E-mail)
Subject: FW: Usage data/license etc.


I'm wondering if anyone has figured out how to use American Chemical
Society usage data easily - they seem to have pretty good and generally
standard information, but their formatting is such that you can't easily
group all data into a spreadsheet. Their text file for import to a
spreadsheet doesn't "line up". i.e. each title/data set is separate and
has to be manually manipulated to get it into any standard format. has
anyone had any sucess getting responses to licensing/contract language
issues from the Electrochemical Society, WorldScientific, or Amazon.com
(for their corporate account)?

Thanks

Chuck Hamaker
Associate University Librarian for Collections and Technical
Services
Atkins Library
University of North Carolina Charlotte
704 687-2825