Measuring the success and effectiveness of online activities is a key issue for all organizations offering online services. Interestingly enough, although organizations and companies invest a lot of money and time in preparing their Web sites (design, operation, and so on), they fail to accurately measure who accesses their sites, how visitors use and navigate the sites, and the financial implications of the sites. This guide addresses these issues, and is primarily aimed at publishers and librarians.

The topic of statistics is very important for publishers, as accessing online resources (especially scientific journals) is becoming competitive. Both publishers and librarians have to look into the usage details of the printed and online resources in these times where library budgets are restricted and do not expand.

The book describes the necessities of, and techniques for, dealing with the enormous amount of online statistics produced. The key in producing useful online statistics is to look at the different groups who will use them: system administrators, publishers, librarians, and end users. Each of these groups has different needs. While a system administrator is much more interested in facts like load balancing, speed, and downtime, the librarian is more interested in which library users are accessing which journals. On the other hand, online statistics also supply valuable information for journal product development, business development, and strategy process. This information is also quite necessary for marketing purposes.

Especially interesting is chapter 7, “Usage Statistics,” which explains the various system usage categories and activities monitored for the various user groups interested in usage statistics. Chapter 10 looks into legal aspects, such as privacy issues and regulations, explaining which types of data can be collected and which regulations one has to take into account. It refers to the situation in the US.

Overall, this guide is a must-read for publishers, but everybody dealing with online statistics and usage will gain something from reading it. I found it to be very useful.