I did a presentation for the South Central Voyager Users Groups (which tells you right there which ILS we use) looking at our statistics. It's available at <http://www.osu-tulsa.okstate.edu/library/pdf/SCVUGM%202007%20Conference%20Presentation%20Documents/Crunching%20Numbers%20ponsford.ppt>.
The first part of the presentation is how to stuff, but skip forward to slide 34 and you start to get to the breakdown between library faculty/staff use vs. the public. My favorite stat: over 35% of library searches were left-anchored title, which we call "title starts with", but only about 5% of the public ever use it.
Bennett
--
Bennett Claire Ponsford
Digital Services Librarian
University Libraries
Texas A&M University
bennett.ponsford_at_tamu.edu
TAMU 5000 | College Station, TX 77843
Tel. 979.845.0877 | Fax. 979.845.6238
http://library.tamu.edu
>>> On 2/5/2008 at 10:55 AM, Karen Coyle <kcoyle_at_KCOYLE.NET> wrote:
> Janet Hill wrote:
>> Repeat after me: There is no typical user. There is no typical user.
>> There is no typical user.
>> Persuade us with actual data, carefully collected, clearly defined, and
>> thoughtfully considered.
>>
>
> And in that spirit, the first question that came to my mind when I
> looked at Selden Deemer's stats was: I'd really like to know WHO did
> those searches. Not individually, but in some grouping. In particular,
> I'd like to see the stats for staff use separated from non-staff. This,
> of course, is not going to be 100% accurate because most of the time we
> don't ask people to identify themselves at public access points. But at
> least in the back rooms and on any machine with a staff sign-in. It
> could turn out that there are some important staff needs that should be
> addressed, even if those features are rarely used by the public.
>
> Then overall statistics can help us make design decisions: what
> functions have to be very efficient because they will be used
> frequently? What functions can we provide in a less efficient manner
> because they are rarely used and don't impact overall response time?
>
> --
> -----------------------------------
> Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
> kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
> ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet
> fx.: 510-848-3913
> mo.: 510-435-8234
> ------------------------------------
Received on Tue Feb 05 2008 - 12:47:40 EST