JISC

Download final report

Given the current economic climate and likelihood of tightening funding, understanding the usage of e- resources is becoming increasingly important as it allows an institution to understand which resources they need to keep subscribing to, and those which they may wish to unsubscribe from - potentially resulting in real-world cost savings. This project will therefore build a software toolkit for reporting e- resource usage statistics (from Shibboleth IdPs and EZProxy) in a user-friendly manner suitable for non-technical staff.

Aims and objectives

• Understand institutional and national accounting and reporting requirements around statistics of e-resource access via Shibboleth and Ezproxy.
• Build a free-to-use, open source software toolkit which aims to present statistical accounting information about e-resource usage to non-technical users, and makes basic aggregated usage information available to external organisations.
• To implement the RAPTOR software toolkit through a process of a quickly developed initial release and subsequent regular updates during the lifetime of the project, through a group of around 8-10 pilot institutions, using their feedback regarding both bugs and desired features to inform the regular updates.

Project methodology

A small development team in Cardiff University and Kidderminster College will be managed by Graham Mason and lead by Rhys Smith. Input from various relevant parties at both institutions, a call to the community for input, and from a group of pilot institutions, will inform the requirements of the software. The team will conduct a process of initial software development then gradual improvement and feature enhancement over the life of the project.

Anticipated outputs and outcomes

• RAPTOR software toolkit to enable Shibboleth and Ezproxy usage statistics analysis.

Technology / Standards used

All software developed will be licensed with an appropriate open source license and will use a standards based approach where possible.