Electronic Statistics: Counting Crows
While the public at large seems to have good feelings about their libraries, it has become increasingly crucial for public libraries to go to their boards, their city councils, and other groups who control the purse strings with numbers in hand. Those numbers need to show growth: more people using more of the library’s resources. It is relatively easy to count circulation, whether of books, videos, or other materials, and rather less easy to count reference questions or telephone inquiries. However, the advent of electronic access, electronic databases, and e-reference has created a multitude of services not so easily quantified. These numbers may be as elusive as the flocking crows of the title’s musical reference. Fundamentally, however, standardizing and counting electronic statistics is most important for libraries themselves: to know who is being served, and how much, to know what to plan for, and what is desired.
The Public Library Association has studied, standardized, and quantified output measures of service in the past. Public libraries are now poised on the cusp (or perhaps on the brink) of resolving a number of interrelated issues concerning electronic statistics. This Tech Note serves as a pointer: these ideas and policies are in development, not available as of this writing, but the projected dates of completion and places of publication are given in the last paragraph.
What are electronic statistics for?
Concern for counting electronic crows indeed grew out of the increase in electronic resources. However, it was the study and effort that went in to defining and measuring other public library statistics that laid the groundwork for these questions. Jay Burton, Head, Library Programs and Development, State Library of Ohio, in Measuring Library Services: The Ohio Project focuses on the Project’s concern with two major weaknesses in public library statistics in general: inconsistency in reporting, and failure to address electronic access. Burton outlines the questions: what should librarians measure? How can it be done efficiently? And what do we do with the information once we have it?
Burton also succinctly describes why it is important that we take such measurements. The reasons include:
- demonstrating good use of public funds
- assisting in planning for goals, objectives, and future technology
- feedback on the efficacy of specific library services
- providing the public with a clear understanding of what libraries do for the community.
Judith Hiott of Houston Public and of the PLA Research and Statistics Committee focuses on electronic statistics. She and the committee define them in two forms:
- measures of availability
- measures of usage
Measures of availability include number of workstations, number of licensed electronic resources, and number of hours of access available. In turn, these can be broken down for more extensive analysis. This breakdown would include, for example, under “number of devices” in the outline, items such as in-library resources, licensed external resources, and number of general Internet portals. Other breakdowns might include counting electronic resources by whether they are index only, index and abstract, and/or full text, and whether these resources are available only on site in the library or by remote users from their homes or offices. Hours of access can then also be counted even when the library isn’t open, if people can use them 24/7.
Measures of usage at the baseline level are number of log-ins/sessions, number of searches, and number of items examined (viewed/downloaded/printed). These in turn can be broken down by database, by time, by title, and so on, including peak number of simultaneous users.
Breaking down and analyzing the electronic numbers offers a library, and by extension its public and its funding agencies, a far clearer picture of what library resources people are actually using, creating part of the benchmarks for collection development, planning, and future technology.
How are electronic statistics developed and defined?
The work done by Hiott and Burton (and others) is based in part on a document produced by the International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC), Guidelines for statistical measures of usage of Web-based, indexed, abstracted, and full text resources, November 1998. These guidelines in turn were based heavily on the work of the JSTOR Web Statistics Task Force, in a very pretty model of not reinventing the wheel. (JSTOR “Redefining Access to Scholarly Literature” is now a not-for-profit organization, founded to provide electronic access to long runs of core scholarly journals.)
John Carlo Bertot and Charles McClure are conducting a study called Developing National Public Library and Statewide Performance Measures begun in January 1999 and to be completed in May 2000. Bertot and McClure intend to develop “a core set of national statistics and performance measures that librarians, researchers, and policy makers can use to describe public library and library-based statewide network use of the Internet and Web-based services and resources.” In the Public Libraries article cited in the bibliography, Bertot and McClure stress that it is better to collect a few specific electronic statistics than none at all. They encourage libraries to at least begin.
It is crucial that electronic statistics and the methods used to describe them be consistent in meaning and methodology. In an email, the director of a public library in Massachusetts notes the difficulties across various vendor platforms of collecting statistics that actually measure the same things. Database vendors do supply statistics, but they are not defined consistently and do not necessarily count what libraries may need numbers on.
As the electronic crow flies
PLA’s Research and Statistics Committee, the outline of whose report and charge is on the web, will publish a complete report, probably in Public Libraries magazine, to be written by Diane Mayo. Judith Hiott’s article in the October 1, 1999, issue of Library Journal covers practical aspects of electronic statistics gathering at the Houston Public Library. Their work, the work of Burton and others in Ohio, and the scholarly study of Bertot and McClure will give librarians good tools for counting those elusive crows.
Bibliography
Hernon, Peter and Ellen Altman. Assessing Service Quality: Satisfying the Expectations of Library Customers. American Library Association. 1998. 243p. Includes chapters on how to assess quality service, going beyond “how much” and what can go wrong with numbers.
Guidelines for statistical measures of usage of Web-based, indexed, abstracted, and full text resources November 1998. This document was published in print form in Information Technology and Libraries, Chicago, ALA, December 1998, p219–21.
An extraordinary gathering of links for library statistical information is at Joe Ryan’s Library Statistics and Performance Measures page. It includes links to state sources, extensive bibliography, and sources in academic, museum, and school library statistics, as well as a number of links to European library statistics sources.
Bertot, John Carlo and Charles R. McClure, ”Measuring Electronic Services in Public Libraries: Issues and Recommendations” Public Libraries, May/June 1998, p176–80.
Hiott, Judith, ”Making Online Use Count” in Library Journal, October 1, 1999, p44–47.
Electronic Statistics Textbook for businesses and institutions. Just what it says, chapter by chapter.
MediaHouse is one source that provides software for statistics.
Prepared by GraceAnne A. DeCandido for the Public Library Association, July 26, 1999; reviewed April 2000. ladyhawk@well.com
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