Serials Solutions Expands 360 Counter Adding New Consolidated Reports to Pre-Filter Data and Streamline Navigation

SEATTLE – Aug. 3, 2010 – Serials Solutions®, the global leader in providing libraries with digital discovery tools and management solutions, announced today it is adding new consolidated reports to its powerful and popular 360 Counter e-resource assessment service. 360 Counter, part of Serials Solutions 360 services, enables librarians to assess collections, justify expenditures and optimize purchases. The introduction of these consolidated reports gives 360 Counter customers the ability to take their complex usage data and create six new pre-filtered reports.

These new reports provide better visibility into how collections are being accessed and used, including: the top 100 collection titles receiving the heaviest usage; those that are the most expensive; and those with a positive or negative percent change in use; and the comparison of titles provided by two or more content providers, which takes advantage of 360 Counter overlap analysis. Librarians can also generate a report, listing titles alphabetically so it is easier to navigate and drill-down to find information.

“The new consolidated reports provide a much-needed expansion of 360 Counter’s already sizable capabilities,” said Carolyn DeLuca, Electronic Resources Librarian for the University of St. Thomas. “We work with tremendous amounts of complex data and need speed and agility in the tools we use to analyze large reports. By having the data pre-filtered, not only are we able to save huge amounts of time, we’re getting better and more tailored reports.”

The pre-filtered functionality of consolidated reports includes:

• Titles from two or more providers: Analyze individual titles that come from two or more providers, compare cost and usage, and determine which provider offers the best return on investment.
• Journals and platforms with a positive or negative change in use: Reports can be configured to reveal journals and platforms whose use has increased or decreased over a period of time enabling librarians to make usage comparison from month-to-month, quarter-to-quarter or year-to-year.
• Top 100 journals calculated by use: Select one or more platforms and a month, quarter or year on the report filter page to calculate the top 100 journals used during this time period.
• The 100 most expensive journals based on cost-per-use: Select one or more platforms along with a month, quarter or year on the report filter page to calculate the journals with the highest cost per use during this time period.

“Consolidated Reports adds a new measure of flexibility to 360 Counter and arms librarians with an objective and quantifiable way to justify budgetary decisions,” said Susan Golden, product manager at Serials Solutions. “Acquisition librarians will now have easier access to critical information about the use of their collections and they’ll be able to quickly locate required nuggets of data so they can look at usage of material vis-à-vis acquisition costs, a vital tool in these economic times.”

About Serials Solutions

Founded by a librarian for librarians in 2000, Serials Solutions® is the global leader in E-Resource Access and Management Services (ERAMS) that serves more than 3,000 libraries of all sizes and types. Serials Solutions’ comprehensive suite of discovery tools and management services helps improve access to and use of collections, eases librarian workloads, and ultimately reduces operating costs. Solutions include: 360, the only complete and integrated e-resource access and management solution; KnowledgeWorks, the authoritative e-resource knowledgebase and foundation for Serials Solutions 360; Ulrich’s, the world’s most authoritative source of bibliographic and publisher information for serials and the most comprehensive source of print and electronic serials data available;  AquaBrowser®, a discovery layer that makes navigation more accessible; and most recently the Summon™ Web-scale discovery service, a revolutionary tool that provides instant access to the full breadth of the library’s collection through a single search.

Serials Solutions is a business unit of ProQuest LLC.