A booking system's probably the most accurate manageable option for
measuring use by people. Getting your system to automatically count use has
its limitations: often this is based on a count of log-ons. In an ideal
world where lines didn't drop and poorly-executed pages of Javascript didn't
crash connections this would be pretty accurate. A booking system won't
measure enquiries - it won't be counting all the questions on the shopping
list someone might have brought with them. It's difficult to know how to
start measuring the number of individual enquiries: we'll know from
experience that it's possible to get the answers to two questions from one
screen and also that's it's possible to have to trawl through a few dozen
sites to even start to get the answer to some others, so the number of sites
visited isn't useful. I wonder if it's actually useful to bother. I agree
with Lionel that it's important to demonstrate use of the Internet to
justify the expense of having it and we need to monitor enquiries about the
Internet as part of our staff workload analysis. I don't think we need to
count the number of enquiries fulfilled by customers using the Internet any
more than we need to know how many answers people got by looking at
reference books or borrowing non-fiction. Of course, any time somebody says
that there's a penny on the book fund for every enquiry made I may change my
tune. :-)

Lionel's second issue raises the spectre of the "Annual visits to an
authority's library web site per 1,000 population" standard (PLS12). I'm not
sure what that standard is proposing to measure, let alone what it actually
means in terms of service delivery. Leaving aside "accidental" hits and
visits by robots, every "legitimiate" hit won't necessarily be an enquiry in
the traditional sense. For instance, a librarian from another authority
looking around to see how other people's web sites address a particular
issue is a perfectly legitimate use of those sites but wouldn't class as an
enquiry (unless you're already counting colleagues coming around to see your
library as enquiries).

Steven Heywood
Systems Manager
Rochdale Library Service
Wheatsheaf Library
Baillie Street
Rochdale, England OL16 1JZ
Tel: 01706 864967
Fax: 01706 864992



> ----------
> From:
> [log in to unmask][SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Reply To: 	[log in to unmask]
> Sent: 	21 September 2000 09:27
> To: 	'lis-pub-libs'; Westlake; Duncan
> Subject: 	Re: Counting electronic enquiries
> 
>      I think we really need to define what an enquiry is & why we are 
>      counting it. There are many ways of measuring internet use in the 
>      library & use is for many different reasons. The use of the internet 
>      should be measured so that we can show our stakeholders that the 
>      investment fulfils it's purpose but counting the public using a
> search 
>      engine is meaningless to enquiry statistics. In Leeds the public use 
>      of the internet is counted via a booking system but when we count 
>      enquiries we distinguish those relating to the internet into proper 
>      enquiries & basically equipment enquiries, The former involving 
>      advice, possibly doing searches for them & enquiries which we select 
>      the internet as the way to answer, while the latter is how do I get 
>      on, how do I save/print,etc. (CIPFA & non-CIPFA?).
>      
>      A separate issue is the accessing of library information remotely, on
> 
>      the Leeds site we have a list of local organisations which is 
>      searchable in a variety of ways - are all accesses to the search 
>      legitimate enquiries?, should they be added to our statistics. We 
>      don't at present but if we did it raises the question of which other 
>      library pages being accessed should also count (all of which our 
>      webmaster has software to provide figures).
>      Lionel Aldridge
>      Performance Manager
>      Leeds Library & Information Services
> 
> 
> ______________________________ Reply Separator 
> _________________________________
> Subject: Counting electronic enquiries
> Author:  "Westlake; Duncan" <[log in to unmask]> at 
> Internet
> Date:    20/09/00 17:04
> 
> 
> Is anyone starting to think about how to count information enquiries 
> your public make using the Internet? We are currently required to 
> provide figures for enquiries handled by staff, but increasingly 
> these will not represent the whole picture. However, how you actually 
> count Internet use in any meaningful way is something of a challenge 
> ... unless someone's already doing it.
> 
> Duncan Westlake (London Borough of Hillingdon)
> 
> 
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