> I put together the first search statistics as part of an internal discussion on
> how often people change the default search - about 65% of the time - and what
> they change the search to.
>
> I've added overall search statistics to
> <http://lib.tamu.edu/directory/bponsfor/opac-usage-stats/> and annotated
> the files with some notes about what those searches are supposed to be doing
> (as well as where the stats have problems). These statistics, btw,
> are just a 10 day (more or less) sample from last fall.
>
> As to the question of how often people click on a link in a bib record, the
> answer is less than 7% overall. And, interestingly, the public more
> than library people.
Thanks so much for adding this information--although I confess I find the results dismaying. As I mentioned, the catalog was designed to allow for keyword searching followed by browsing, e.g. I find one book on Roman history during the time of Cicero with the heading Rome--History--Republic [date], and I should be interested in all books with that topic (and I have always believed that these results could be displayed and sorted in all kinds of interesting ways that are not done today).
But all this assumes that people will click on the heading and it appears that people mostly do not. Therefore, everything after that goes down the drain. Does this fall in with statistics from other institutions as well?
Even the FRBR generic user tasks (which are not very specific):
-- to find entities that correspond to the user’s stated search criteria (i.e., to locate either a single entity or a set of entities in a file or database as the result of a search using an attribute or relationship of the entity);
-- to identify an entity (i.e., to confirm that the entity described corresponds to the entity sought, or to distinguish between two or more entities with similar characteristics);
-- to select an entity that is appropriate to the user’s needs (i.e., to choose an entity that meets the user’s requirements with respect to content, physical format, etc., or to reject an entity as being inappropriate to the user’s needs);
-- to acquire or obtain access to the entity described (i.e., to acquire an entity through purchase, loan, etc., or to access an entity electronically through an online connection to a remote computer).
sort of imply that people will look for groups of materials. So, either we must assume in your case e.g. that 93% of the searches were successful and retrieved what people wanted (i.e. 7% of heading searches coming from a click inside the bib record would assume that people wanted something more). Or, that the users did not click on the headings and just did an entirely new search. In the first case (93% success rate), this does not ring at all true to me since searching catalogs is so difficult, and the second case (making entirely new searches and not clicking on the headings) is extremely dismaying.
The fact that the public uses browse more than staff does not particularly surprise me. I would guess that staff members who are managing the collection are looking more for specific items than the public who are mostly looking for groups of materials.
Jim Weinheimer
Received on Thu Feb 07 2008 - 03:35:32 EST