Re: Spider Activity Reports from Blackwell Synergy

["Ellen Finnie Duranceau" <efinnie@MIT.EDU>]

Here at MIT we've also had a regular stream of reports from 
Blackwell, and have also noted that the initial message does not 
offer enough information to pursue an investigation.  Access is 
only cut off for a few hours, which is good, but it does seem 
that having a time of day and the name of the journal title(s) 
included in the initial message would be a good idea.  The 
wording of the messages is identical for some other publishers, 
too, (e.g. Liebert) so seems to be driven by the software the 
site is 'powered by' - in this case Atypon?

A wrinkle related to these excessive use messages:

While this is not true in all cases, we are finding that use of 
Google DeskTop can trigger some publishers' excessive use 
thresholds.  In at least one case where we could not identify 
unusual activity, the user at the IP was able to tell us he uses 
Google Desk Top and we believe in that case (and perhaps in 
others) that was the source of the tripping of the threshold.

I'd be interested in what others have to say about this Google 
DeskTop issue as well as the Blackwell (and other) excessive use 
messages.  In particular, I'd like to know what protocol or 
procedure you follow for investigating and who performs the 
investigation.  If anyone understands exactly how GoogleDesktop's 
crawler causes the publishers' sites to detect excessive use, I'd 
be interested in that, too.

Ellen Finnie Duranceau
Digital Resources Acquisitions Librarian
MIT Libraries
efinnie@mit.edu