Knowing where they're going: statistics for online government document access through the OPAC

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.

Citation

Brown, C. (2004), "Knowing where they're going: statistics for online government document access through the OPAC", Online Information Review, Vol. 28 No. 6, pp. 396-409. https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520410570526