[Dspace-general] Week 2: Statistics

[Dorothea Salo]

2008/8/26 Mark H. Wood <mwood at iupui.edu>:

> Well, it depends on which numbers are wanted.  I do think there will
> be some reports that are popular enough, and easy enough to get right,
> that they should be built in.  The support for external tools would be
> aimed at people who do want to use them.  What sort of data would be
> useful to the manager who isn't into heavy statistical analysis, which
> aren't likely to be provided as built-ins?

Well, I hope that's where the discussion this week has been pointing.
If not, we'll have to find a different way to gather that information.
Looking at existing implementations of statistics (e.g. EPrints, SSRN)
might be a start.

> o  the tail should not be allowed to wag the dog -- we want
>   statistics, but that's subordinate to building excellent document
>   repository software.  Part of, important, but in a supporting role.

This is such an interesting statement that I think I will make it next
week's topic! What *is* excellent document repository software? I have
a feeling that the non-developer community may have a rather different
take on it from most developers... we'll see if I'm right.

> So I am hoping that we can mostly satisfy most people with relatively
> modest built-in statistical support, and take care of the other cases
> with modest support for the development of external reporting
> mechanisms.

I'd be interested to know how the proposals that have been put forward
this week place on a modesty scale. Developers?

> This is one reason why I think that it should be as easy as possible
> for multiple stat. projects to tap into built-in streams of
> observations.  Different sites have different needs, and I think we
> need to be able to easily play with various ways of doing stat.s.

Agreed, but just to toss this out: I foresee a countervailing pressure
in future toward standardized and aggregated statistics across
repositories. I have heard a number of statements to the effect that
faculty are using download counts from disciplinary repositories in
tenure-and-promotion packages. As their work becomes scattered and/or
duplicated across various repositories, they're going to want to
aggregate that information.

>  There are a
> number of good attempts now, but it's not easy to install them and
> that limits the amount of experience we can gather.

+1. This is a problem for more than just statistics!

Dorothea

-- 
Dorothea Salo dsalo at library.wisc.edu
Digital Repository Librarian AIM: mindsatuw
University of Wisconsin
Rm 218, Memorial Library
(608) 262-5493