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Analytics: Meet the OLS Dashboard

2016-01-20 / 3 Comments on Analytics: Meet the OLS Dashboard

Here it is:  version 2.0 of our new OLS Dashboard:

CUNY_OLS_Dashboard (v1.0)

You can enter the OLS Dashboard from the link above or go directly to a full view of any of the included graphs via the links below:

Information about the source data for each of the graphs is displayed at the bottom of the individual graph page, not on the overview/dashboard page.

Try these features:

  • Click on a legend point in any of the graphs. This will offer a popup window with 2 options: “Keep Only” and “Exclude.” Selecting one of these options will filter the information only in this single graph, changing it to display only the selected data. Note, however, that the static 0-300K vertical axis makes it difficult to see individual school data.
  • There is an “Undo” option at the bottom-left of the page to remove a single filter action. Use the “Reset” option to remove multiple filtering steps at once.
  • Double-click on any graph to zoom in on the data. Once that is done, a “Home” button appears to take you back to the original view. The “Undo” and “Reset” buttons also work on these changes.

OLS is currently using Tableau Public’s free service to bring you this information. (Check the Tableau Public Status page if you can’t get to our OLS Dashboard.)

[Note that this blog post was updated on 27 April 2016 to point to v2.0 of the OLS Dashboard.  The image at the top is still the original v1.0 OLS Dashboard.]

OneSearch vs Aleph as an E-resource Source

2015-11-11 / Leave a comment

Last week’s post about link checking describes one of the ways that OLS is working on improving access to e-resources via OneSearch.

Another area of work regards e-resource records batchloaded to Aleph which are also available via the Primo Central Index (PCI). Because of the large number of duplicate records coming from Aleph, there are often problems determining availability correctly for these batchloaded records.

To avoid these problem, when OLS finds that PCI records are duplicated in Aleph, we mark the Aleph records in order to prevent transfer of these records to OneSearch.

Note: OLS is not removing records from Aleph, we are simply not using those records in OneSearch.

Additional benefits of this approach:

  • Efficiency. Duplication doesn’t only happen with PCI. Sometimes the same records are loaded to Aleph for multiple libraries. Any library using OneSearch as their discovery tool can choose to stop running these duplicate batchloads.
  • Faster turnaround with updates coming to PCI directly from the publisher.
  • Reduced potential for error and out-dated content.

How do I know which Aleph records are being blocked?

STA = PCI means we don’t need this record in OneSearch. These records can be found in Aleph via a CCL search (where “xx” is your library code):

wst=pci and wow=xx

What if there is more metadata in the Aleph record than in the PCI record?

Many PCI records come with searchable full-text — for example, in addition to the metadata, the entire text of an article could be searchable. Although it is possible that PCI records will contain less metadata than Aleph records, in such cases, we believe that the searchable full-text is a more than ample substitute. On the OLS Support Site, the following information is available:

How do we know if specific e-resources are available in PCI in order to decide what content is duplicated?

PCI makes activated collections searchable (aka “discoverable”). Full-text access for CUNY (aka “Full text Available” in OneSearch) happens because the resource is also activated in SFX. Many PCI collections can be searched for free, even when delivery of full-text is only available to subscribers. See the Primo, PCI, and SFX blog post for more information on this relationship.

At CUNY, we have activated all free-to-search PCI collections in our testing (“Sandbox”) version of OneSearch. When we want to check if specific e-resources are available via PCI, we can search for them in the Sandbox and, after the initial search result is displayed, we click on the “Include results without full text online” checkbox to include content to which we do not have full-text access.

Aleph e-resource records that are not found in PCI will continue to be sent to OneSearch.

Sandbox Caveat: The Sandbox does not include all CUNY content. It is restricted to 100K (local) records so it only contains a small percentage of our Aleph content.

Why does OneSearch sometimes say “No full-text” when there is a working link to full-text in the “Details” tab?

Distinguishing what is really available as full-text is challenging. To minimize user frustration, it is considered preferable to under-promise and over-deliver rather than to over-promise and under-deliver. In other words, the system errs on the side of false negatives (“No full-text” displayed even though full text is available), instead of false positives (“Full text available” displayed even though full text is not available).

For this reason, it can be helpful to remember that while “Full text available” is generally reliable, “No full-text” is less reliable. It is usually worthwhile to click on the “Details” tab of a “No full-text” result, just in case it contains some link that will get you to full-text.

Example: HathiTrust provides no indication of whether its content is open access or not, forcing its users to choose between false negatives and false positives. In response, we at CUNY have chosen to indicate that all HathiTrust content is “No full-text” even though many records will contain a link to full-text in the “Details” tab.

Are e-books showing up in Google Scholar? Many faculty will go to Google Scholar as their discovery tool and bypass the library.

E-resources activated in SFX show as available at CUNY in Google Scholar. This means that a side effect of this project is more availability information being shared with Google Scholar, inadvertently leading to a better user experience in Google Scholar. Please be aware, however, that Google Scholar shares little about how and where it gets the information it provides.

What are e-resources?

“E-resources” refers to any type of content that is available in electronic or digital form. This includes articles, books, videos, and more.

Primo: Palgrave Connect

2015-09-08 / 1 Comment on Primo: Palgrave Connect

The CUNY-wide licensed ebook titles of the Palgrave Connect collection are now active in SFX and can be discovered in Primo.

In SFX, 6,491 portfolios are active for all of CUNY in the PALGRAVE_CONNECT_EBOOKS_COMPLETE target.

Impact of Primo on SFX

2015-08-27 / 2 Comments on Impact of Primo on SFX

A few weeks ago, we (OLS staff) discussed ways in which the impact of Primo on other systems and environments could be illustrated.

A good place to start with is SFX, since it’s so heavily involved in creating fulltext links in Primo. So one way to measure Primo’s impact on SFX is to count the number of OpenURLs generated by Primo (either through “View Online”, or through the menu under “Other Options”) and compare them to other providers/generators of OpenURLs.

In FY 14/15, the top 5 providers were Primo, bX, Ebsco, Google, and Gale (For the remaining providers, the numbers drop significantly). Here’s a table with the number of OpenURLs generated each month by each provider:

                bX	Ebsco	Gale	Google	Primo	Other
July-14	        3052	14185	6990	6847	308	9672
August-14	1147	7512	1571	5821	859	12186
September-14	4477	25903	3289	10940	19302	25912
October-14	10651	44538	8009	16150	63698	35567
November-14	12934	49530	11050	17189	97932	25718
December-14	9506	31664	7530	15206	86557	19483
January-15	2583	9595	2030	6925	22495	12034
February-15	6194	24143	3317	9526	49877	17518
March-15	12127	41397	7257	15032	96998	24205
April-15	11756	40696	8220	14330	103400	23534
May-15	        10033	33960	7951	13107	99598	18721
June-15	        3494	14075	1955	7026	28637	11702
TOTAL OpenURLs: 1538333

I thought the best way to show the behavior over time is to use an area chart, because it shows how values (# of requests) change over time for different categories (OpenURL “generators”):

impact1

Since it’s implementation at the end of August 2014, Primo has quickly taken over a large share of the OpenURLs resolved by SFX, at a small expense to the other providers, but not by much. It actually looks as if the percentage of requests for the other main providers has remained relatively stable

The same chart in absolute numbers looks like this:

impact2

So it looks as if Primo has taken over a large share of the OpenURL requests, but not so much by taking them “away” from other providers but by simply increasing the number of OpenURLs.

The total number of SFX requests for FY13/14 was about 1.1 million (1,107,169). In the past FY, this increased by almost 40% to 1.5 million (1,538,333). And of these, 670K (669661) came from Primo.

Observations:

  1. In FY 14/15, Primo was responsible for over 40% of OpenURL requests, i.e. SFX menus
  2. It reached this number very quickly, within about 2 months of going live
  3. It simply increased the number of requests, and did not diminish the contribution of other vendors
  4. Given the impact on SFX, the impact on e-resource usage (search sessions, etc.) should be significant as well

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