Does your library use SUSHI, and if so what are your experiences so far?
Suzanne Johnson
Wednesday, 25 February 2009 17:21 UTC
This week NPG has announced a new reporting service to provide customers with upgraded COUNTER-compliant reports that meet COUNTER Release 3 requirements and work with SUSHI (Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative). Read NPG’s press release here.
I’m wondering does your library use SUSHI, and if so what are your experiences so far?
Updated 25 February 2009 18:13 UTC
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Replies
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We’re in the process of setting up our electronic resource management database and hope to work with statistics this summer at which point we’ll become keenly interested in SUSHI compliant statistics.
Jill
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We don’t have an ERM system so we’re not planning to make use of SUSHI at the moment. We download our usage stats a couple of times a year (end of calendar year, end of financial year) or as and when we need them from a particular vendor for a particular decision. We do not find the burden onerous at present. We import usage stats into our subscriptions management MS Access database and that gives us the cost-per-download functionality we require. We don’t have the staffing or financial resources to spend on acquiring and populating an ERM system when our existing in-house systems seem to be doing OK. But good luck with yours Jill!
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Here is a good FAQ on SUSHI compiled by librarians: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dg5rrkpx_0fv5wdnd9
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Thank you for your feedback so far. Since we launched MPS Insight last month, we’ve had a couple of queries about using the SUSHI element. Interestingly the queries came in from customers based in Japan.
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We don’t have an ERM here either, as I’m the RM. As COUNTER-compliant reports have come into their own, I have adapted my info gathering to take advantage of the more standardized data. For the last 7 years I have been taking the usage data from all of our site licenses and putting it into an Excel workbook that I set up to calculate cyclical use and the ROI for each resource. I like to see the trends and compare them to what our R&D programs are working on. This hasn’t been a big burden for me since I don’t have an extensive journal list like a University or a major Pharma would.
I don’t have time to start up a new database/info system, but I would be interested to read/hear how others implement SUSHI. (Suzanne’s note that the queries are coming from Japan gives me a smile.)
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A one day conference was hosted by the Conference of Italian University Rectors (CRUI) on March 27 that looked at a number of studies and analyses made in Italy of ERMS, both commercial and open source, followed by a session on some experiences to date.
While ERM systems did have an important impact with regard to efficiency, there was a feeling that many of these systems are still immature and that some institutions needs are so specific that an ERMS tailored to their own requirements is necessary.
The Italian Research Council for instance have devised their own ERMS.
Here is the link to some of the presentations made: http://www.crui-care.it/?q=node/599
And here is a link to a bibliography on ERMS that could be useful with relative links to the source material: http://www.uniciber.it/index.php?id=460
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