Tansy Matthews Associate Director, Virtual Library of Virginia NISO COUNTER Webinar May 6, 2009

 VIVA (The Virtual Library of Virginia) is a consortium of 39 state-assisted colleges and universities at 55 campuses, 33 of Virginia's independent (private, not-for profit) colleges and universities, several other Educational and Research Institutions  Process statistics for all member libraries centrally for VIVA products

Track usage over time Collection Development Library education Advocacy Etc., etc.

 To store data over the long term, formatting must be consistent.  To compare across products, use data must be measuring the same intellectual activities.

 By providing a standard format and standard definitions, COUNTER facilitates the long term storage of data and makes comparisons meaningful.

 COUNTER reports summarize data for rapid understanding.

COUNTER reports summarize data for rapid reporting.

Awkward to concatenate over time.

 Columnar format allows data to be sorted on a variety of attributes.  Storing the data in a database allows for optimal flexibility, and ample storage space.

 Non-COUNTER compliant vendors:  Everyone’s different ▪ Each vendor has to be processed individually  COUNTER compliant vendors:  Standard format = Batch process  Either: ▪ “Flip” spreadsheet version ▪ Import XML versions of reports - Data will be imported in columnar format

 Importing XML  Multiple files can be imported simultaneously.  Order of columns can be assigned initially and remains consistent  Data can be easily refreshed – catches updated numbers  COUNTER COP3 requires all reports to be available in XML

 Combine multiple reports into a single workbook.  Standardized COUNTER format allows for batch processing.

 Excel Import Multiple Text Files Software

 Processsing_counter_statistics.xlsm  Assigns report type and institution name to each line, combines all imported reports into a single Excel worksheet.  Date and other attributes are added to the worksheet manually.  Available at: cessing_instructions.doc cessing_instructions.doc

 Spreadsheets  Database table  More space  More flexible  More options

Tansy Matthews VIVA Associate Director