Blackwell's books platform becomes COUNTER-compliant

Blackwell Books Online has been certified as providing COUNTER-compliant usage data. The platform, which hosts Blackwell Reference Online and The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology Online, adheres to Release 1 of the COUNTER Code of Practice for Books and Reference Works.

Blackwell Publishing is the fourth vendor to become compliant with the new books Code of Practice, which came into existence in March 2006. ‘We encourage other publishers and vendors of eBooks and reference works to become compliant,’ said Peter Shepherd, director of Project COUNTER. ‘It’s important that a critical mass of vendors issue compliant statistics so that libraries can begin to get a picture of the value of their online resources and can make true comparisons across products.’

The usage reports of Blackwell Books Online, which are said to be always up-to-date and accessible at any time, show the number of successful section requests by month and title, turnaways by month, and total searches and sessions by month. Blackwell Reference Online and The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology Online are built on a platform developed by Semantico. According to Brad Scott, account director at Semantico, this was the first deployment of the new COUNTER component part of Semantico’s SAMS access management system.