WML Tech Updates

Jim Huenniger, the National Sales Manager from Swets Information Services came to Vanderbilt today to talk to the Heard Library system to talk about two of their products, ScholarlyStats and SwetsWise.  SwetsWise is wholly owned by Swets, while the ScholarlyStats product is owned by MPS Technologies, Inc. (a UK company).

Jim’s going to talk about Scholarly Stats and SwetsWise. Swets is based in Holland and has been in business 105 years, in 160 nations. They work with 65, 000 publishers, 60,000 clients, 1.8 million subscriptions. The flow of info is to acquire, access, and manage.

Their core services are in subscription management and they work with retrieval and normalization of usage data. They work between publishers and libraries.

It is a web-based portal. This is a good thing (meaning that it would be available anywhere as opposed to having something install on a computer).

Jim gave everyone a folder with lots of handouts. We went over the various collection platforms (EBSCOhost, Emerald, Blackwell Synergy, etc.) that work with Scholarly Stats, which is one of the handouts.

Benefits of the service:

• Gain added insight into user behavior
• Use time analyzing rather than administering usage data
• Reduce the real labor cost associated with data retrieval
• Counter compliance
• Usage data monthly
• Any report can be viewed online, printer

Benefits of the portal:

• It’s a repository to securely assemble all vendor access details
• A rolling 5 year collection of usage data
• Archive of historical usage statistics reports for year-on-year analysis
• Portal Administrator may grant read-only access to other staff (basically, there can be other user profiles and levels of permissions)

Integration:

SwetsWise Subscriptions is being enhanced to further assist libraries with the challenges of E-Resource Management.

Jim showed several screen shots and examples of what things look like, and then went into the demo. Ann Ercelawn, Roberta Winjum, and Bill Hook all had questions.

John Haar asked if they look at non-journal electronic materials, such as indexes, abstracts, reference books, e-books, etc. Jim responded saying that they are looking into it, and he knows that they are looking closely at e-books.

COUNTER Compliance. This is an important thing. It standardizes the usage statistics.
JSTOR and Springer aren’t included on the list. Neither is LexisNexis and HeinOnline.

Bill Hook asked about how detailed the reports can be. Instead of seeing that 5 people used a database in a month, he wants more detailed information. But it really depends on how detailed the publishers are in providing information to Scholarly Stats.

Flo asked about loading prior years usage data into ScholarlyStats. They won’t automatically do it, but if you have statistics that you have been collecting, you will be able to load the data. Again, they have a rolling 5 years, but that 6th year isn’t lost - it can be saved and archived in whatever way we want.

SOLINET signed an agreement with MPS, affording members up to 25% savings.

He mentioned that UT in Chattanooga is testing out the lowest level (looking at 9 platforms within ScholarlyStats) to see how they like it and to possibly consider consortium pricing. Jim said he hasn’t talked to Therea (the Dean at the Lupton Library at UTC) since January about it.

I talked briefly with Roberta Winjum, Head of Tech Services, about how I know some people at UTC and would be willing to contact them about what their thoughts are regarding ScholarlyStats. ;-)

The number of platforms (levels):

• up to 9
• up to 24
• 38 plus

—- 5 minute break —-

Now Jim is talking about SwetsWise, the features, enhancements, etc.

Key Features:

• Screen Views - subscription, account, and financial information
• Subscription Search
• Order/Review
• Claiming - print and electronic access claims
• Account Grouping
• User Management
• Online Reports

SwetsWise isn’t a static product - they are still developing many features. In June, version 4.4 will be out. By the end of the year, version 5.o will be ready.

Future Additional Features:

• Consolidation -
• Further Account Information
• Bulk Orders and Renewals
• License Bank -

E-Resource Management:

• Gathered data is based on ERMI recommendations
• ILS integration - their first partner was Innovative
• They are using OpenURL to load data

Jim gave a demo of SwetsWise. We currently have this product (I think Chris Waldrop is the administrator) and he talked about new and upcoming features, and how it works for those in the room who did not know much about it.

Other members of Vanderbilt’s ERMS Evaluation Project Team can talk more about the demo and their opinions. I didn’t want to even attempt to capture all that here.

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15 people in total attended, including most of OUL and representatives from Central, Peabody, Science, Law, Divinity, Biomedical, Management, Tech Services, Order Services, and LITS. After the ScholarlyStats demo was over, many people left.