FY22 Educational Resources Assessment
Frequently Asked Questions
Following are answers to our most frequently asked questions about the usage assessment process. Please refer all questions to your liaison(s). Questions of general interest or concern will be answered here as they are received.
- Google is asking me to log in when I try to open a document. What should I do?
- Does my department need to provide specific feedback for every journal? What if we are neutral on a title or agree with the library faculty's recommendations?
- The number of full text views included for each journal in the feedback forms and in the dossiers appears low. What is included in these counts and why do they appear lower than I expect for certain journals?
- The number of full text views included for each journal doesn’t account for all the uses we make of a journal in our department. For example, what if an article is downloaded once but that copy is shared with and used by many students in one or more classes? How do we indicate this in our feedback?
Q: Google is asking me to log in when I try to open a document. What should I do?
All rubrics, dossiers, and title lists are configured to allow Georgia Southern University account holders to view the document. All feedback forms are configured to allow account holders to edit the document. In either case, you must be logged into Google Docs using your Georgia Southern email account to open the document. If you are not logged in when you attempt to open the document, Google will prompt you to do so via a generic login screen. This screen will not indicate that you should log in using your Georgia Southern email, but you should do so. After entering your email into the generic login screen, you will be redirected to the MyGS login screen to complete the login process. You should then be redirected to the document. If you are unable to open a document after following these instructions, please contact your liaison(s).
Q: Does my department need to provide specific feedback for every journal? What if we are neutral on a title or agree with the library faculty's recommendations?
According to the Feedback Instructions, departments may abstain from providing feedback. To abstain for a specific journal, simply leave the row as-is without making any changes. To abstain for a journal package as a whole, make no changes to the feedback form and either make a statement to this effect on the form or notify your liaison(s) that the department abstains for that package.
If the department is neutral regarding whether a journal should be renewed or discontinued, please abstain for that journal. If the department actively agrees or disagrees with the Libraries' recommendation for a journal, then please indicate this by selecting either Renew or Discontinue for that title. Alternatively, if the department actively agrees or disagrees with the Libraries' recommendations for multiple titles or for all titles, just make a statement to that effect on the feedback form and we can update the form for you.
Departmental recommendations to renew or discontinue a journal will be weighted in the final review of each title, regardless of whether the department agrees or disagrees with the library faculty's original recommendation. Therefore, departments are encouraged to indicate if a journal should be discontinued as this may free up funds with which to renew other titles.
Q: The number of full text views included for each journal in the feedback forms and in the dossiers appears low. What is included in these counts and why do they appear lower than I expect for certain journals?
The full text view counts provided for each journal show the average number of articles views made annually by Georgia Southern students, faculty, and staff via the database or journal package to which the feedback form or dossier corresponds (i.e., the “host” of the full text). Counts represent the mean average of the most recent two or three years of available usage data for the database or journal package. Most data pre-dates March 2020, and therefore precedes COVID’s impact on research and instruction.
Counts include all full text views via the database or journal package regardless of how the article was discovered or accessed. So long as the publisher of the database or journal package “saw” you as a member of the Georgia Southern community at the time, then the full text view was counted for Georgia Southern. For example, if you viewed an article on the publisher’s website via Google Scholar while on-campus, your article view was counted based on your IP address. Alternatively, if you viewed the same article via Google Scholar while off-campus, your article view was counted if you logged in using your Georgia Southern credentials (e.g., via OpenAthens). If you logged in via an association or another institution’s credentials while off-campus, then your article view was not counted for Georgia Southern.
A count may appear low for a specific journal if the Libraries provide access to the journal via more than one database or journal package. For many journals, the Libraries provide access to current issues via the publisher website (e.g., Wiley) while providing access to back issues via an EBSCO or ProQuest database (e.g., Academic Search Complete). Full text of some journals may be available from a dozen or more databases or journal packages. Therefore, counts do not reflect all full text views of a given journal title across all available databases or journal packages. If a count appears low for a particular journal, then this may indicate that full text for that title is being accessed via other databases or journal packages in the Libraries’ collections. Therefore, individual counts should not be used to evaluate the overall use, value, or popularity of a journal, but only it’s use via the database or journal package to which the feedback form or dossier corresponds.
Q. The number of full text views included for each journal doesn’t account for all the uses we make of a journal in our department. For example, what if an article is downloaded once but that copy is shared with and used by many students in one or more classes? How do we indicate this in our feedback?
Correct, the full text views included for each journal may undercount multiple uses of a downloaded copy of an article. In this case, be sure to complete the Departmental Assessment field for the title and indicate in the Comments field how your department uses the journal in ways that may not be reflected in our usage statistics. Of course, the best way to ensure that the Libraries are aware of how a journal is used is to link to the article in the Libraries’ collections rather than upload a copy to Folio. Also, uploading copyrighted materials to Folio is not automatically protected by fair use and may violate copyright law. Always consult with your library liaison(s) before uploading any library resource to Folio, or if you need help creating permalinks to any of our resources.