Knowing where they're going: statistics for online government document access through the OPAC
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520410570526 |
| Published date | 01 December 2004 |
| Pages | 396-409 |
| Date | 01 December 2004 |
| Author | Christopher Brown |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Knowing where they’re
going: statistics for
online government
document access
through the OPAC
Christopher Brown
The author
Christopher Brown is a Reference Librarian and Coordinator
for Government Documents at the Penrose Library, University of
Denver, Denver, Colorado, USA.
Keywords
Worldwide web, Government, Online catalogues, Tracking
Abstract
While documents librarians are generally familiar with document
usage through their circulation statistics, they have no idea of
how publications are being accessed online. The University of
Denver has developed a system for tracking online document
access. By redirecting every URL in their OPAC for federal
documents first to a ColdFusion database, recording the URL,
and then sending the user to the online document, they were
able to track each access to online documents. Then, importing
these statistics into an Access database, they were able to
provide an analysis by agency, date of document, and other
features. This article presents the results of one year of tracking
access through the University of Denver library OPAC.
Electronic access
The Emerald Research Register for this journal is
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The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1468-4527.htm
Introduction
The increased electronic distribution of US
government publications via the internet has
forever altered the way we manage depository
libraries. Statistical analysis, essential to effective
management, is extremely challenging in the
electronic age. We know what documents our
library users check out of the library, but when it
comes to online documents, do we know where
they are going?
While statistics for local usage of online
subscription resources are available, albeit with a
lack of consistency (Shim and McClure, 2002),
comprehensive access statistics for online US
federal documents are not generally available.
There are several reasons for this:
.Although the most common top-level domain
for US federal web sites is .gov, others are used
as well: .mil, .org, .edu, and even .com (the
distribution of top level domains in the
University of Denver online catalog
documents records is: .gov (87.15 percent);
.edu (4.09 percent); .org (2.87 percent); .com
(2.41 percent); .net (2.00 percent); .mil (1.17
percent); .us (0.20 percent); numeric IP
addresses (0.10 percent).
.Government information is hosted on
hundreds of web servers. The US
Government Printing Office (GPO) counted
1,416 unique publisher domains in the
Catalog of Government Publications (CGP)
(see www.access.gpo.gov/gpoaccess/fdlp/
tools/domains.html). A count of unique
domains for government documents in the
University of Denver library catalog yielded
1,398.
.Web sites hosting government documents do
not provide usage or access statistics for the
documents on their servers. Thus, if libraries
desire such statistics, they need to derive them
on their own.
Many commercial web content publishers provide
statistics for their licensed resources so that,
among other reasons, subscribers can track their
investments in the database products.
Government publications librarians likely have
different motivations for tracking freely available
online government information. These
motivations might include:
.a justification for including URLs in catalog
records;
.a defense for remaining in the federal
depository library program;
Online Information Review
Volume 28 · Number 6 · 2004 · pp.396-409
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited · ISSN 1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/14684520410570526
Revised article received 12 August 2004
Accepted for publication 26 August 2004
396
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