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Instruction librarian award in the USA
Arjan Huisman of Elsevier’s Customer Service Focus Project reports from Amsterdam
Q: How do I know how well ScienceDirect or Scopus is being used?
Arjan Huisman
A: When it comes to the value of your collection, a key question to answer is how often a platform is used. At Elsevier, we help you answer the question of how often searches are done on ScienceDirect or Scopus by offering multiple reports that are accessible by administrators using our Usage Reporting Tool. (This tool is accessible at its own URL as well as from our Admin Tool.)
Here are some questions the usage reports answer:
- How many searches and sessions have my users conducted on ScienceDirect and Scopus within a certain time frame?
- How many requests for fulltext articles or book chapters have my users made in a certain time frame?
- What is my patrons’ usage per reference work, eBook and books within series on ScienceDirect?
- What is my patrons’ usage of unsubscribed journals on ScienceDirect?
The Usage Reporting Tool also offers data reports to answer other questions you might have on your organization’s usage of ScienceDirect or Scopus. For example, we provide a report showing key usage figures for the Scopus author evaluation tools.
ScienceDirect and Scopus usage reports are COUNTER-compliant and have been recently audited. This means they are compliant with the international code of practice for reporting usage. The reports can be viewed online or exported into PDF or Excel to allow further processing of the data.
To access the usage reports:
- Log on to the Usage Reporting Tool at http://usagereports.elsevier.com
- Use the same username and password as when accessing our Admin Tool
If you don’t have a login name and password for our Admin Tool, you can find more info at http://info.admintool.elsevier.com.
Elsevier's Usage Reporting Tool offers data reports to help you assess the value of your collection.
The Usage Reporting Tool site offers resources to help you use the tool; these include a quick user guide, interactive tutorials and help files. A description of all the reports is available as well, so you can find the most appropriate report for your needs.
If you need further assistance, please contact the E-Helpdesk department. To find contact details for the E-Helpdesk in your region, visit http://contacts.elsevier.com. 
http://usagereports.elsevier.com
http://info.admintool.elsevier.com
Chris Jasek of Elsevier’s User Centered Design Group answers your usability questions
Chris Jasek
Q: What is World Usability Day and why does it matter?
A: The Usability Professionals’ Association founded World Usability Day in 2005 to highlight the importance of ensuring that important services and products are easy to access and simple to use. The celebration of World Usability Day points to the fact that usability has become an important issue for knowledge workers in all fields.
For 2007, the World Usability Day focus was health care, and so on November 8, Elsevier participated in a series of events to increase health care professionals’ awareness of the importance of usability. With doctors and nurses making better use of electronic tools, quality of care is improving. Yet it’s always important to step back and take a customer’s perspective. Are the products we’re developing truly usable?
Andrew Ferguson (standing) and Ted Gies
(on the right) of Elsevier's UCD Group discuss
the design and usability of alarm clocks with
Boonshoft Museum visitors Paul and Maria
Jasek as they all celebrate World Usability
Day 2007.
To help celebrate the day, colleagues from Elsevier’s User Centered Design Group participated in events in Dayton, Ohio as well as in Philadelphia and St. Louis. (Whew!) There we spoke about the functionality of tools ranging from new medical devices or technologies, to resources enabling drug research and delivery, to websites facilitating disaster planning. At the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery in Dayton, where a good time was had by all, we interacted with over 160 kids and their parents!
If your library decision makers still don’t believe in the importance of usability, next year invite them to a World Usability Day event. Everyone working in or benefiting from libraries today is affected by usability, and a great way to acquaint people with usability is to introduce them to World Usability Day.
www.elsevier.com/librarians/AskUCD
