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/
--
Eric Morgan <emorgan_at_nd.edu>
Received on Fri Mar 13 2026 - 18:52:59 EDT