Karen, Hugh,
Some quick notes in response to your emails.
FWIW, some stats from the last 7 days usage of the "test" version of Copac.
As it is the test version, the sample size is very small, so these
numbers might not be truly representative of normal Copac usage.
The interface in question is at http://copac.ac.uk/msgw and is still
under development.
Karen Coyle wrote:
>> * 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?
3 types of search. Most people use the default "Quick" search (which is
just a cut down version of the "Main" search.) There is also a "Map"
search.
Total number of searches: 1764 (of which 280 are the result of
someone clicking on a heading in a full record display.) I've only
been logging the query itself and not the form it came from. However,
I do log the number of times each form has been displayed by the
CGI script.
Form views:
Quick search = 789
Main search = 250
Map search = 88
The top four fields used across all search forms, in order,
are: title, author, standard number (eg, ISBN), keyword.
Title gets nearly twice the usage of author, which in turn
has nearly twice the usage of standard number and keyword.
The last two mentioned have broadly the same usage.
>> * If there are sort options, what is the default and how often are
>> all of them used?
There is a sort function which was used 35 times for the following sort
types ("-date" means reverse date order, etc.):
date = 14
ti,date = 12
au,ti = 4
-date = 3
-ti,date = 1
rank = 1
Basically, not much used.
>> * What is the default display, and how often is each display option
>> used?
>> * How many records/screens are displayed on average?
77% of searches found 1 or more records. Of those searches there
are, on average, 1.3 views of the Brief record display and also 1.3
views of a Full record display.
>> * If there are facets, how often is each facet type selected?
No facets.
>> * What system are you using? (Vendor, brand)
Home grown.
>> * What type of library is it? (public, academic, special)
UK & Irish Academic and National Library Union catalogue.
As I said above 77% of searches find records. Ie 23% find none,
making 0 records the most common result. The next most common
result set size is 1 record, second most common is 2 records,
third is 3 records, etc, etc. (This has always been the case
when I've compiled these sorts of stats before.)
> My personal experience in working on OPACs is that most
> features are used rarely,
I'd agree with the above, but that doesn't mean the features
are useless or not worth implementing. For those people that
do use the features they may be indispensable.
Regards,
Ashley.
--
Ashley Sanders a.sanders_at_manchester.ac.uk
Copac http://copac.ac.uk A MIMAS Service funded by JISC
Received on Wed Feb 21 2007 - 05:55:13 EST