opac stats presented so quickly theres no time for snark on #code4lib bill dueber, university of...
TRANSCRIPT
OPAC stats presented so quickly there’s no time for snark on #code4lib
Bill Dueber, University of Michigan
But does anyone use it?
Note – lots
of stuff i
n the prese
nter’s notes.
Don’t miss
it.Note – lots
of stuff i
n the prese
nter’s notes.
Don’t miss
it.
NEW!!NOW
FEATURING ACCURATE
DATA!
NEW!!NOW
FEATURING ACCURATE
DATA!
Why did the numbers change?HathiTrust and Mirlyn share a
common code base and Solr backend
I was incorrectly logging HT search events and (correctly) ignoring all other HT activity
…so the apparent number of single-search sessions was grossly inflated
NEW SLIDE!!
NEW SLIDE!!
tl;drRelevancy ranking is incredibly important.
Everything else is ignored by almost everyone.
The argument for statistics (as opposed to just asking the Reference Librarians)
People who use your stuff
People who use your stuff
Associated with your
school
Associated with your
school
People who use your stuff
Associated with your
school
Associated with your
school
Actually enter a library
Actually enter a library
People who use your stuff
Associated with your
school
Associated with your
school
People who actually talk to a librarian
Reference librarians only know about patrons that talk to reference librarians.
Those people are self-selected freaks who shouldn’t drive our development priorities.
1.
2.
Search Results
Record View
Our statistical universeRoughly 750K sessions with searches in 2010
Throw out sessions from known staff IP addressesBecause, really, talk about self-selected freaks…
Get 724K sessions, 1.67M searchesW
RONG
Our statistical universeRoughly 500K sessions with searches in 2010
Throw out sessions from known staff IP addressesBecause, really, talk about self-selected freaks…
Get 485K sessions, 1.5M searches (avg. 3.1 searches/session)
First wake-up call
45% of all sessions have exactly one action: a search
WRONG
First wake-up call
17% of all sessions have exactly one action: a search
Corollary one
Only 17% of all sessions involve someone seeing the Record View12% of those (2 percentage points) are
from “See Holdings”WRONG
Corollary one
In only 28% of all sessions does the user see the Record View
In only 37% of sessions does a user interact with a specific record (either by doing something to get to the Record View or clicking on an eLink for fulltext.)
Are they writing down call numbers? Having failed searches?
Second wake-up call
Anything not at the top of the screen is ignored
Place in result set of records touched
Result Percent Cumulative
1 40% 40%
2 12% 52%
3 7% 59%
4 4% 63%
5 3% 66%WRONG
Place in result set of records touched
Result Percent Cumulative
1 44% 44%
2 14% 58%
3 7% 65%
4 5% 70%
5 3% 73%
6 3 76%
What does that mean?
People do a lot of known-item searches
and/or people really, really trust your relevancy ranking
Make sure your relevancy ranking is really, really good.
Percentage of sessions that…Use a facet: 4%Use a canned search (e.g. author or subject link): 2.6%
Export records/search: 1.3%Prev/Next/Back: 0.8%
WRONG
Percentage of sessions that…Use a facet: 7%Use a canned search (e.g. author or subject link): 4%
Export records/search: 2%Prev/Next/Back: 1.4%
If you’re interested
I’ll strip identifiers out of the data and provide an sqlite3 database after the conference
…once authority to do so has been debated and eventually granted by the correct set of committees and subcommittees.
Bill Dueber [email protected]