Re: COUNTER: current status and advice to users]

[Sandy Thatcher <sgt3@psu.edu>]

Excuse my ignorance, but would someone please explain to me why 
anyone cares about usage statistics for books? I can understand 
that usage statistics for journals might enter into decisions 
about whether to continue subscriptions, but what decisions 
follow from book usage statistics? Since books are unique items, 
and a library has already purchased the book before any usage 
statistics are available, what does one do with the statistics 
one gathers about book usage? I can imagine that authors might 
find the information valuable, as usage might be some indicator 
of value, and even publishers might find the information useful, 
as a sign of what kinds of books seem to have a greater 
receptivity in the market than others. But why are these 
statistics important to librarians?

Sandy Thatcher
Penn State University Press


> *Books and Reference Works (Release 1)*: since it was published 
> in March 2006, 3 vendors have become compliant with this Code of 
> Practice. Implementation by vendors has been slower for several 
> reasons, the most important of which is the fact that demand 
> from librarians for COUNTER compliant usage statistics is, as 
> yet, much less strong for books than it is for journals. This 
> is, however, beginning to change as both supply of and demand 
> for e-books is starting to accelerate, and we expect a rapid 
> expansion in the number of vendors compliant with this Code of 
> Practice in 2007.