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feeding Alma Fake COUNTER Reports using Real Data from Deadbeat Vendors

JEFF KARLSEN

KARLSEJ@SCC.LOSRIOS.EDU

TECHNICAL SERVICES LIBRARIAN

SACRAMENTO CITY COLLEGE

ECAUG ONLINE, 2025-10-30

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COUNTER

  • how vendors are compelled to provide meaningful, comparable data
  • specific formats
  • vendors are audited for compliance
  • a triumph of librarian organizational efforts!

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Real data

  • You know what it means
  • You have some confidence of accuracy
  • This means you should be able to map it to COUNTER-defined metrics

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Deadbeat vendors

  • We have an “academic” package; we market to academic libraries
  • But we don’t provide the reporting that libraries expect
  • You probably know some of these

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IR_M1 data that includes only proper COUNTER

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Same report with faux COUNTER from Kanopy and Swank (Digital Campus)

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Prioritizing

  • This will be more laborious than SUSHI retrieval
  • What is important?
  • So far we have only considered
    • TR_J1 (not currently doing any)
    • TR_B1 (Overdrive/Libby)
    • IR_M1 (Kanopy, Swank, a few other odd providers)
  • Note: Excel or CSV output is the goal

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Create a faux IR_M1 report using Kanopy data

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Finding an IR_M1 Excel model – Infobase admin

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Finding an IR_M1 model – Infobase admin

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IR_M1 web display

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IR_M1 as Excel; header, body

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Our custom header

Should be kanopy:1385

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Kanopy Analytics area

Set to full month

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Match the data elements

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Delete titles with no plays

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Our faux COUNTER IR_M1 report

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Upload it!

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And Alma accepts it

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Speedier via Library Open Workflows