The California Digital Library has released University of California systemwide 2008 use statistics for selected databases, e-books, and journals.
Here's an excerpt from the announcement:
One of the observations from reading the 2008 usage reports is that there are wide variations in some reported statistics. Some of the changes may reflect actual usage trends and some may result from anomalies in the data. Below are some possible reasons for the usage changes:
- New content or backfiles have been added
- New features or links implemented on the interface associated with full-text access
- Data mining activities
- More external entry points for the full-text content, e.g., Google Scholar
- Greater use of Google Scholar and other search engines instead of A&I databases, resulting in usage declines for those databases
- Research interest changes on the campuses
In addition, some publishers are now providing and end-users have begun using software that allows users to easily download multiple full-text articles simultaneously. For example, since September 2008, Elsevier has partnered with Quosa, a document download software company, to allow users to download up to 20 PDF versions of full-text research with only a few clicks. CDL will be monitoring the effect these new tools may have on UC usage reports.