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- Steve: We need to be able to measure how many questions were asked in general categories; how they're being asked and where. At desk, away from, in person, on phone, e-mail. Would be nice to get handle on complexity issue, maybe by taking time. Uses them to inform general strategy and direction, but doesn't use them to make in day-to-day decisions.
- Question 31 on page 4 of ARL statistics submission form asks for "number of reference transactions" and "Is the reference transactions figure based on sampling? Yes or no?"
- The instructionsfor that question (page 6) define "reference transaction" and it's supposed to exclude simple directional questions (questions we define as "other"). "Sampling based on a typical week may be used to extrapolate TO A FULL YEAR for Question 31."
- Saw this report, which confirms that many ARL libraries are having a hard time with this: http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/spec268web.pd
Lisa had a spreadsheet trying to correlate door counts with ref stats. It doesn't seem to have a pattern, but there are only 5 years to look for a trend. We may want to include ARL stats with this to look for a trend.
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- Remlee played with Excel example described here: http://www.bibliotechweb.com/archives/2005/10/27/reference-statistics/, but doesn't recommend.
- Pros:
- simple!!!
- takes stats by hour
- can run reports easily
- Does create some pretty cool graphs on the fly.
- Cons:
- Can keep only at one desk, and would have to combine individual stats at end of month anyway.
- Can't delete a stat easily, and you can't go back and enter stats for a previous time period.
- No gratification - people can't see how many stats have been entered so far in month.
- Just another window on your browser to open.
- Pros:
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