Knowing your users: the value of article database usage analysis

This study analyzes the usage data of a major engineering article database, IEEE Xplore, from 2005 to 2008, at Texas A&M University. Usage data collected from the IEEE Xplore statistics website demonstrated some interesting patterns of user behavior. Usage of the database increased steadily from 2005 to 2007, but dropped in 2008 due to the launch of the library's new website; off‐campus usage was high in the first two years, but plunged in 2007 and 2008. Users from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and, to a lesser degree, from the Computer Science Department, were identified as major users of the database by IP statistics. The most heavily used journals and articles indicated that solid‐state circuits, microwave, information theory, and power systems were probably among core research areas in electrical and computer engineering for the university. The impact of conference articles in this database increased continuously throughout these years.