Exploring Usage Data Across Multiple Collection Types

Abstract

This paper explores server log data related to user interactions with the Texas Digital Newspaper Program (TDNP), a collection hosted on University of North Texas Libraries (UNT) Portal to Texas History. At the time of this writing, TDNP hosts over 7 million pages of Texas newspapers, contributed by 178 partner institutions. The data gathered for this research spans 2018 and examines 30-minute session interactions with newspaper content to observe how users move between an individual newspaper issue to newspapers contributed by different institutions; to issues from other newspaper titles; to newspapers from different years; and to other object types. This is intended to serve as an environmental scan of how newspapers are currently being utilized within the UNT Libraries’ digital collections.