A few observations based on 12 months of data from our Primo discovery system (Jan 2015 ~ Dec 2015):
Sessions:
- 333,091 unique sessions
- Roughly 2% originated outside the U.S.
- Users signed in 5382 times (roughly 1.5% of sessions)
Great to see there were 333K sessions during the year but the fact that fewer than 2% of our users ever sign in is particularly worrisome for a library that serves a geographically-dispersed community. A number of our content providers require that their material be excluded from discovery and delivery if you can’t show that you have a Mason affiliation. Working from a device on the campus network meets that test for most of these vendors but a signon with our Primo satisfies them all.
So, whether you’re studying in a local coffeeshop before your evening class, or you are a Mason Online student hundreds of miles from campus, to search Primo for content from ARTstor, MLA International Bibliography, Web of Science and several other resources you’ll have to sign in.
Worth mentioning a few other benefits that signing-on delivers:
– tweak the relevance of Primo’s retrieval–ranking materials in your area of interest more highly
– store items on your personal e-shelf between Primo sessions
– increase the number of results per page (up to 50)
– access your circulation record
– set up recurring queries
– build RSS feeds of result sets
…and more
Searches:
- 1.1 million searches were performed
- 999,731 of those were basic searches (90.3%)
- 106,314 were advanced searches