New tool provides insights into e-resource usage
A new tool launched by Cardiff University’s information services directorate and Jisc allows people to assess the popularity and use of e-resources so they continue to deliver value for money.
Eileen Brandreth, director of university IT at Cardiff, said: “I am confident that Raptor will make a real difference to education institutions looking to maximise value from investments in e-resources. The information that Raptor provides will enable institutions and individual Academic Schools to assess the best value and most useful e-resource subscriptions for their students and researchers.”
People using Raptor can produce statistics on e-resource use whenever they are needed in as much detail as they require - for example, usage by an individual university department.
Chris Brown, Jisc e-Research Programme Manager, added: “The Raptor tool has successfully gone through beta testing and incorporated user feedback prior to the release of this version, which is ready for production deployment. With universities looking at the potential cost savings and efficiencies, the Raptor tool provides valuable statistics on resource usage. It can analyse a variety of log files and present important information, not only promptly, but most importantly, in an easy to understand and visual way.”
The fully-released Raptor system lets institutions view usage statistics from different access management systems in use across the education sector.
Chris added: “The team at Cardiff have used their wealth of experience in this area to build a tool that is easy to install, use and is extremely powerful.”
The launch of the tool follows the Jisc webinar on the Journal Usage Support Portal which can also help librarians assess their subscriptions.
The Raptor system focuses particularly on federated access systems, where online resources request access authorisation from the ‘home’ institution of the visitor, resulting in easier single sign-on access for users.
Raptor is also now available for both Linux and Windows servers, further widening the potential audience.
Find out about a series of workshops for staff at institutions interested in benefiting