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172 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.10, 2018

should be prepared to collect usage statistics automatically with SUSHI. Digital Resource
Acquisition Alliance of Chinese Academic Libraries (DRAA) advocated using SUSHI to harvest
usage statistics of DRAA members automatically on 25th February 2014. This initiative marked
that academic libraries in China began to be involved in the road of implementing SUSHI, and
raised the concerns about SUSHI in China again. In order to deepen the understanding of SUSHI
for academic libraries and content providers in China and to promote SUSHI application, this
paper starts with a quick review of the background and the latest development on SUSHI, then
demonstrates how to implement SUSHI for both SUSHI clients and servers, then investigates how
the different players (standards organizations, libraries/library consortia, content providers, ILS/
ERM vendors) fit together to promote SUSHI in foreign countries and China. Two cases, JUSP and
DRAA electronic resource statistics module, are also introduced to present the major basic steps
involved in SUSHI implementations. Finally the paper examines some of the factors that promote
or hinder the wide adoption of SUSHI, and proposes some suggestions to promote the application
of SUSHI based on the stakeholders.
The study shows SUSHI implementation involves transferring messages between the SUSHI
client side and server side. The SUSHI client side (mainly including libraries/library consortia,
ILS/ERM vendors) should first choose a SUSHI client, and then configure the SUSHI client in
order to successfully harvest COUNTER reports while the SUSHI server side(mainly including
content providers) should develop a SUSHI Web service to deliver XML-formatted COUNTER
reports to libraries. SUSHI has been widely used and supported by standards organizations,
libraries/library consortia, content providers and ILS/ERM vendors in foreign countries, but it has
not been so widely adopted in China until now. There has not yet had such a standard for electronic
resource usage data as COUNTER or SUSHI. Stakeholders in China are working to promote
SUSHI applications and have achieved initial results. The influence of a library consortium is
far stronger than that of a single library, and the adoption by more library consortia can well
demonstrate the success and maturity of SUSHI to some extent. JISC collections and DRAA are
two of the successful international cases which develop the services for electronic resource usage
data. The two have some similarities when implementing SUSHI. Both develop the SUSHI client
on their own and encourage the member libraries and content providers to join the consortium’s
SUSHI service, and ultimately provide a single point of access to usage data from participating
content providers on behalf of member libraries.
The needs in libraries, the promotion of standards organizations and library consortia, the
support of content providers and ILS/ERM providers are the main factors that promote SUSHI
implementation, but there remain some of the roadblocks that impede consistent implementation
of SUSHI such as the aspects of awareness, technology and standards. In the future, the whole
community should have its roles in supporting SUSHI. For standards organizations such as
COUNTER and NISO SUSHI Standing Committee, they should promote the upgrade of SUSHI
and COUNTER constantly, develop SUSHI implementation guidelines and promote related