Maybe a bit OT, but if it's important to know who is doing what
searches, are libraries/librarians prepared to start collecting user
demographic data, along with the usage? Pseudoanonymous access has
been something of a sacred cow, part of the library's creed which
protects a user's "rights" to privacy (which I'm all for, but we're
hobbling ourselves if we don't at least create some sort of user
taxonomy and link that with usage data).
Staff v. public use is easy to detect (the ILS practically gives it
away; online resource vendors allow for group IDs), but what about the
undergrad v. graduate v. faculty? Oncologist v. nurse practitioner?
Journalist v. historian? Etc.
-jk
On Feb 5, 2008 8:55 AM, Karen Coyle <kcoyle_at_kcoyle.net> wrote:
>
> 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
> ------------------------------------
>
--
James Knight, MLIS
WKHMR
Friday Harbor, WA
Received on Wed Feb 06 2008 - 01:30:30 EST