Deriving Usage Statistics from Local Library Management Software

The importance of keeping track of the developments that are taking place in an increasingly competitive scientific research field cannot be overemphasized. However, wading through the maze of information available and knowing which data are the appropriate bunch to pick are often daunting tasks. This chapter will focus on the treatment of the former task, the latter being the domain of research workers (referred to as users or clients in the text to follow). About a decade ago, when some publishers began to electronically capture the entire contents of a physical issue, library users got their first taste of the digital medium. The initial disjunction between print and digital media warranted the establishment of a new mindset, without previous prejudices and inhibitions. Despite the fact that reading an entire article, in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) or Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) format, on a computer screen is not a mean achievement, most researchers now prefer e-serials to print serials. In fact, a pilot study undertaken by the Chemistry Biology Pharmacy Information Center (hereafter referred to as Information Center) at Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH), Zürich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), during the years 2003 and 2004, which encompassed ninety-five printed scholarly journals in the fields of chemistry and biology, confirmed the expected disinterest of its clients in browsing scientific works in print form. Statistics from this study, while not pertinent to the present chapter, are available upon request from the authors.