buried the lede?

["Hamaker, Charles" <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>]

Two of our publishers (on very different platforms) have come up 
with NO downloads in the last couple of months. One dropped from 
over 600 downloads in September of 2005 to 0 (none) in 2006. The 
other publisher shows no usage for the last two months. I 
personally believe it is because they've "hidden" the links to 
the full text on the abstracts page, they've made the links so 
unobtrusive to actually getting the article that it's difficult 
to FIND where to click to get the pdf or html.

Has anyone else noticed this recently redesigned websites, 
drastic drops in the number of downloads?  Both of these 
publishers' websites are relatively recent redesign. We contacted 
one of the publishers who assured us that the 0 stats were 
accurate even though I could find a number of click throughs from 
our Open URL resolver.

Chuck Hamaker
Associate University Librarian Collections and Technical Services
Atkins Library
University of North Carolina Charlotte
Charlotte, NC 28223
phone 704 687-2825