Re: Counter report consolidation service

[Ann Okerson <ann.okerson@yale.edu>]

Having asked in our shop, I got the two following respones from librarians
who work a great deal with e-usage data at Yale.  Of possible interest.  
Ann Okerson

MESSAGE #1:
_____________

We now get a number of Counter-compliant reports.  However, in the back of
my mind has always been that the COUNTER XML format would be our savior.  
If all our COUNTER publishers produced their data in the same XML format
and if it was delivered every month to an email address (say an automated
email box on our one of our servers), then my thought was that it was be
very minor work for someone like Karen [in library systems office] to
write a script to autoprocess the incoming reports to a data warehouse.

My secondary thought associated with the above scenario is that eventually
our ERM vendors will create that XML processing functionality and we'll be
set.

Of course, this all assumes that our publishers will eventually conform to 
the not-yet-finalized COUNTER XML standard...

MESSAGE #2
____________

I can't remember how many of our stats are in counter format but an
increasing number are.

To me, what is most useful is having one mode of delivery rather than
having all the files sent at once or in one giant file (which actually
wouldn't really be useful at all, as we'd just have to separate them). ie.
not having to have 5 different passwords for 5 vendors, some of which
change yearly....that is the real problem.

I might be willing to try this out but I'm not convinced this would really
help very much.  I was also hoping that the counter xml format or the ERME
work would help us more...I wonder if its worth looking into a 3rd option
at this point.

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