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    360 Counter: Glossary of Terms

    • Product: 360 Counter

    What are the terms used by 360 Counter?

    The following terms and definitions are used in 360 Counter. Some come from Project COUNTER, while others come from the Report of the DLF (Digital Library Federation) ERM Initiative. (Although the Report of the DLF ERM Initiative is no longer being updated, the Report is the one that was used to develop 360 Resource Manager and 360 Counter.)
    Term Definition
    Aggregator A type of vendor that hosts content from multiple publishers, delivers content direct to customers and is paid for this service by customers.
    Collection A subset of the content of a service: a collection is a branded group of online information products from one or more vendors that can be subscribed to/licensed and searched as a complete group. Example - Science Direct Back files.
    Consolidated Reports The ProQuest system that aggregates all of a library's usage data uploaded into 360 Counter and ultimately into the Intota Assessment reporting interface.
    COUNTER-compliant usage statistics Usage statistics that are reported in a way that is compliant with the Project COUNTER guidelines and use defined ways to count usage. When usage reports have the same kinds of data and are formatted in the same way, they can be compared to each other and can be automatically retrieved into local systems, such as 360 Counter.
    Database A collection of electronically stored data or unit records (facts, bibliographic data, and texts) with a common user interface and software for the retrieval and manipulation of data. Example - Social Science Abstracts.
    Fiscal Year A setting in the Client Center that manages the start date of your subscription-costs cycle as it will appear in your 360 Counter consolidated reports.
    Item Requests Number of items requested by users as a result of a user request, action, or search. User requests include viewing, downloading, emailing and printing of items, where this activity can be recorded and controlled by the server rather than the browser. Turnaways will also be counted.
    Journal A serial that is a branded and continually growing collection of original articles within a particular discipline. Example Tetrahedron Letters.
    Platform An interface from an Aggregator, Host, Publisher or Service that delivers the content to the user and that counts and provides the COUNTER usage reports.
    Project COUNTER Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources. An agreed international set of standards and protocols governing the recording and exchange of online usage data.
    Publisher An organization whose function is to commission, create, collect, validate, host, distribute and trade information online and/or in printed form. Example Wiley and Springer.
    Scope The third-party vendor that manages the Data Retrieval Service (DRS), the subscription-based uploading of Counter-compliant usage statistics for 360 Counter clients.
    Search A specific intellectual query, typically equated to submitting the search form of the online service to the server.
    Service A branded group of online information products from one or more vendors that can be subscribed to/licensed and searched as a complete service, or at a lower level. Examples are Science Direct, Academic Universe, and Wiley Interscience.
    Session A successful request of an online service. It is one cycle of user activities that typically starts when a user connects to the service or database and ends by terminating activity that is either explicit (by leaving the service through exit or logout) or implicit (timeout due to user inactivity.)
    Subscriber An individual or organization that pays a vendor in advance for access to a specified range of the vendor's services and/or content for a predetermined period of time and subject to terms and conditions agreed with the vendor.
    SUSHI Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative, a set of standards for online usage-reporting and analysis that allows librarians to obtain and evaluate their library's usage statistics automatically. 360 Counter's Data Retrieval Service (DRS) uses SUSHI-protocol harvesting to retrieve usage-statistics reports from those vendors (providers) that have SUSHI servers. ANSI/NISO Z39.93-2007.
    Timeout Automatic termination of a session due to a period of user inactivity. The average timeout setting would be 30 minutes.
    Turnaway A turnaway (rejected session) is defined as an unsuccessful log-in to an electronic service due to exceeding the simultaneous user limit allowed by the license service.
    Validation Following the upload of usage data, 360 Counter matches the journal titles on the vendor report to 360 KB, identifies errors, and updates the values and costs of the consolidated usage data.
    Vendor A publisher or other online information provider who delivers its own licensed content to the customer and with whom the customer has a contractual relationship. Examples - Wiley, Oxford University Press.
    Vendor Report Information providers prepare and distribute usage reports for journal, provider and e-book usage. COUNTER-compliant vendor reports may be uploaded by the Data Retrieval Service and are formatted to match Project COUNTER standards. Non-compliant vendors may display their data in different formats. A library may take a non-compliant report and reformat it according to COUNTER standards, and then upload to 360 Counter.

    • Date Created: 9-Feb-2014
    • Last Edited Date: 28-Jun-2015
    • Old Article Number: 7182
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