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

2.  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

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

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

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

8.  COUNTER reports summarize data for rapid understanding.

9. COUNTER reports summarize data for rapid reporting.

10. Awkward to concatenate over time.

11.  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.

13.  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

14.  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

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

16.  Excel Import Multiple Text Files Software http://www.sobolsoft.com/exceltext/ http://www.sobolsoft.com/exceltext/

18.  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: http://www.vivalib.org/stats_training/counter_pro cessing_instructions.doc http://www.vivalib.org/stats_training/counter_pro cessing_instructions.doc

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

23. Tansy Matthews VIVA Associate Director tmatthe6@gmu.edu 703-993-2694 www.vivalib.org