Hi,

For my college, I use both LibInsight of the Springshare suite, and manually going to database sites for the majority that don't work quite right with it to gather the COUNTER reports. Whenever we have a renewal come up, I report the Total Item Requests (or Total Item Views if that is more relevant) to our stakeholders to help them see the recent pattern of use for inclusion in the decision making process.  Sometimes we use Title Reports for ebooks to help with collection development decisions, and Turn Away reports for troubleshooting.


Hydy Cates, MLIS
Electronic Resources Coordinator
Columbus Hall | Library
COLUMBUS STATE COMMUNITY COLLEGE
PH: (614) 287-5817
Email: [log in to unmask]
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From: Code for Libraries <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Harker, Karen
Sent: Saturday, March 14, 2026 3:16 PM
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Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [CODE4LIB] [EXT] [CODE4LIB] counter reports

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Glad to see this question posed about using COUNTER for decision making.  As a member of the COUNTER Metrics Advisory Committee, I'd like to point you and others interested to the COUNTER Metrics site - https://www.countermetrics.org/.  Of particular note are the myriad of education resources to help you gather and use COUNTER stats - https://www.countermetrics.org/education/.

Finally, there is now an online forum specific to COUNTER - https://www.countermetrics.org/community-and-counter/ .  There you can post questions to a community that has had wide experience with COUNTER.

To answer your questions more directly, we use COUNTER data for microevaluations (of specific resources), macro-assessments (of subject-based collections), and for reporting purposes (national surveys and accreditation reports).  For evaluations of resources, we provide usage data that is combined with cost to derive CPU.  For packages or subscriptions of multiple resources, we also look at the distribution of usage across the contents - wider distribution would be better.  Our collection development librarian examines the data and makes decisions with input from other sources, but usage and cost are the most key factors.

Regarding which metric to use (which is likely one of the common questions), the best approach is to understand the resource itself.  For journal subscriptions, we use Unique_Item_Requests - this eliminates duplication from interfaces that show the full-text in multiple formats.  For books, we use Unique_Title_Requests - this is most akin to a book checkout.  However, for some books that are more like reference resources (e.g., dictionaries, encyclopedias), we are using Unique_Item_Investigations, which captures a more complete utilization of the resource.  This is also the metric we use for database resources, including A&I, full-text databases, reference resources, etc.

I would advise working with your EBSCO rep regarding utilizing Panorama effectively, particularly if you are able to incorporate costs so that CPUs are easily generated.

Good luck!


Karen R. Harker

Collection Assessment Librarian

University of North Texas Libraries

Denton, Texas 75287

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________________________________
From: Code for Libraries <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Eric Lease Morgan <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, March 13, 2026 5:51 PM
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: [EXT] [CODE4LIB] counter reports


How is your library collecting COUNTER reports and making decisions against them?

As you probably know, COUNTER is a standard for formatting the usage statistics from vendors and publishers. The reports come in two formats: delimited and JSON. There seem to be about two dozen standardized reports, and the easiest ones to get your brain around are the book and journal reports. These reports list things like what book was viewed (or downloaded) in a given time frame, and then lists the total number of views/downloads. I know. The reports are much more nuanced than that. Such is only an example.

For the gentlest introduction, see "Basics and Resources: COUNTER" [1] An example COUNTER report ought to be attached, and it addresses the question, "How many times was Access Engineering accessed in the given year?"

Given the myriad of COUNTER reports, there ought to be more than a myriad of ways to interpret them. This community -- being a set people who eat data for lunch -- probably have experience getting and interpreting COUNTER data. Thus, I'm curious. How do y'all get, interpret, and use COUNTER data?

[1] https://libtechlaunchpad.com/basics-and-resources/counter/<https://libtechlaunchpad.com/basics-and-resources/counter/>

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Eric Morgan <[log in to unmask]>