This poster will present the results of an in-depth analysis of resource usage by IP address at the University of Virginia. Usage data by IP address was obtained from several library vendors. Due to the design of UVa’s network infrastructure, an analysis of this data allows us to glean much more granular information about our various user communities and how and where they are accessing our resources than the general, COUNTER-compliant reports. Importantly, this increased level of detail can be achieved while maintaining user anonymity.
This analysis gives us the ability to break down our overall usage by user community, such as faculty vs. student use. Additionally, it gives us an unbiased metric of where our users are when conducting their research, and will be compared to our various user surveys, which have asked our faculty and students to self-identify their own research habits.
Following the successful conclusion of this project, several other avenues will open up for additional research, including applying the same types of analysis to our proxy server logs and citation management statistics.
