All that glitters isn’t gold. The complexities of use statistics as an assessment tool for digital libraries
| Published date | 06 February 2017 |
| Date | 06 February 2017 |
| Pages | 185-197 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/EL-09-2015-0179 |
| Author | Joy M. Perrin,Le Yang,Shelley Barba,Heidi Winkler |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
All that glitters isn’t gold
The complexities of use statistics as an
assessment tool for digital libraries
Joy M. Perrin, Le Yang, Shelley Barba and Heidi Winkler
Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, USA
Abstract
Purpose –Digital collection assessment has focused mainly on evaluating systems, metadata and usability.
While use evaluation is discussed in the literature, there are no standard criteria and methods for how to
perform assessment on use effectively. This paper asserts that use statistics have complexities that prohibit
meaningful interpretation and assessment. The authors aim to discover the problems inherent in the
assessment of digital collection use statistics and propose solutions to address such issues.
Design/methodology/approach –This paper identies and demonstrates ve inherent problems with
use statistics that need to be addressed when doing assessment for digital collections using the statistics of
assessment tools on local digital repositories. The authors then propose solutions to resolve the problems that
present themselves upon such analysis.
Findings –The authors identied ve problems with digital collection use statistics. Problem one is the
difculty of distinguishing different kinds of internet trafc. Problem two is the lack of direct correlation of a
digital item to its multiple URLs, so statistics from external web analytics tools are not ideal. Problem three is
the analytics tools’ inherent bias in statistics that are counted only in the positive way. Problem four is the
different interaction between digital collections with search engine indexing. Problem ve is the evaluator’s
bias toward simple growing statistics over time for surmising a positive use assessment. Because of these
problems, statistics on digital collections do not properly measure a digital library’s value.
Practical implications –Findings highlight problems with current use measures and offer
improvements.
Originality/value –This paper identies ve problems that need to be addressed before a meaningful
assessment of digital collection use statistics can take place. The paper ends with a call for evaluators to try to
solve or mitigate the stated problems for their digital collections in their own evaluations.
Keywords Web analytics, DSpace, Institutional repository, Digital collection assessment,
Digital collection evaluation, Digital repository, Use statistics
Paper type Case study
Introduction
Beginning in the 1990s, institutional digital libraries and collections arose across a variety of
specialties and geographic locations. For the purposes of this article, digital libraries and
digital collections refer to the digitized and born-digital items found in institutional
repositories and special collections. This variety led to a proliferation of methods, both
theoretical and practical, for digital collection assessment. These methods are focused on
how libraries created these collections, including the systems used, metadata implemented
and usability of the web site. What is lacking from the current literature is a standardized
model for use assessment of these digital collections or evaluating how much the collection is
actually being utilized by online patrons. Without this model, digital collection curators are
not able to evaluate if their digital collections are increasing, maintaining or losing their
value for the institution. The digital collection management eld has not yet been able to
address a standardized method to evaluate use statistics.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0264-0473.htm
Digital
libraries
185
Received 19 September 2015
Revised 16 January 2016
Accepted 9 March 2016
TheElectronic Library
Vol.35 No. 1, 2017
pp.185-197
©Emerald Publishing Limited
0264-0473
DOI 10.1108/EL-09-2015-0179
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