Gold from straw: usage log data – what are they good for?

How useful is aggregated usage data harvested from institutional OpenURL Resolvers and from the national OpenURL Router Service? This is the question EDINA seeks to address in a short JISC-funded project: Shared OpenURL Data Infrastructure Investigation.

In the online information environment, staff and students take various routes in search of the information that they need for research and study. Their libraries seek to facilitate those searches by redirecting requests to appropriate (e.g. subscribed) sources. In the course of these investigations, students and researchers build pathways that may be useful to others.

Informed by the MESUR project at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US, JISC has commissioned EDINA to scope the feasibility and value of a service that will capture those trails and harness their value. EDINA is exploring the feasibility of creating a database from aggregated usage log data, and the value to the UK HE community of services derived from that database; for example, providing useful recommendations for ‘related texts’ as well as evidence of emerging trends in scholarship and the value or impact of specific resources within the community.

EDINA is also considering the technical, administrative, legal and policy issues associated with an initiative that may provide services to the community as a whole, as well as to individual institutions.