The UK’s JISC and Cardiff University’s information services directorate have launched a new tool, called Raptor, which allows people to assess the popularity and use of e-resources. The aim is to help them continue to deliver value for money.
According to Eileen Brandreth, director of university IT at Cardiff, Raptor will make a real difference to education institutions looking to maximise value from investments in e-resources. The information that Raptor provides, it is expected, will enable institutions and individual academic schools to assess the best value and most useful e-resource subscriptions for their students and researchers.
People using the tool can produce statistics on e-resource use whenever they are needed in as much detail as they require - for instance, usage by an individual university department. The fully-released Raptor system lets institutions view usage statistics from different access management systems in use across the education sector. The launch of the tool follows the JISC webinar on the Journal Usage Support Portal which can also help librarians assess their subscriptions.
The Raptor system focuses particularly on federated access systems, where online resources request access authorisation from the ‘home’ institution of the visitor, resulting in easier single sign-on access for users.
The tool is also now available for both Linux and Windows servers, further widening the potential audience.
