COUNTER5, Shibboleth, and Marketing Pays Off...

Two topics dominated the work week for me this week.

1. First was the move of many of our vendor accounts in Alma to COUNTER5 reports, I'm still not sure which ones exactly we are going to need, so I'm not requesting as many reports as I could be. It's also extremely frustrating when it looks like you have all the proper credentials and everything set up and you go to harvest the accounts and nothing works. This move is taking longer than I expected, and the number of vendors, who tell you what credentials you need, and you follow those to a tee, and they still fail, is really growing.
   
2. Along with COUNTER5 this week has been more work on Shibboleth login for our database and journal vendors. Some work super smooth, others require more attributes than we currently release to the vendors. So my workflow has been, verify we have all of COUNTER4 for the last year, then I try and set up COUNTER5, if I have success, I then remove all the COUNTER4 jobs, and verify we have all the reports working as needed. Still not one-hundred percent on the COUNTER5 reports we will be needing.
   
3. Finally, one side note. I was notified that a student had signed up for a Library Workshop, it was the first time that form was used and she had noticed our marketing in the library bathroom signage. Tells me that method may work, but she also told me she did not know the library offers this service. Tells me we need to do a better job of letting the students know the services available to them.