Gathering stats on catalog use

I posted about this on my blog, but it didn't get any response so I
figure I need to ask it here. I want to see some catalog use stats; not
a full-blown scientific study, nor an in-depth study of usability. What
I want is to see what features of online catalogs get used, and to what
degree. I know this is tricky because different catalogs have different
offerings, and that defaults have a huge influence on what features
actually get used. But I would like to create some way for people to
easily submit use stats to a common pool, for our general edification.
What I have in mind are things like:

    * What search types are available? Which of these search types is a
      default? How often is each search type used?
    * If there is an advanced search page, how often is it used?
    * If there are sort options, what is the default and how often are
      all of them used?
    * What is the default display, and how often is each display option
      used?
    * How many records/screens are displayed on average?
    * If there are facets, how often is each facet type selected?
    * What system are you using? (Vendor, brand)
    * What type of library is it? (public, academic, special)

It seems to me that we need some hard data before we start talking in
any detail about design options. My personal experience in working on
OPACs is that most features are used rarely, and that user behavior is
not always what you would expect. My best example of this latter was the
data that we got on screen displays in MELVYL. When MELVYL was a telnet
catalog, you got about 1-2 records per screen, and people looked at an
average of 2.5 screens. There was a review display with 20 items, and
people looked at an average of 2.5 screens of that. When it became a
web-based catalog, you got about 10 records per screen, and people
looked at an average of 2.5 screens. I saw somewhere that on Google
people look at an average of about 2.something screens. So what people
look at seems to have little to do with the amount of whatever it is on
the screen, but is based on some other factor that we can observe even
if we can't explain it. That's the kind of data I'm looking for.

kc

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Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
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