Keepin Track

Keepin Tracka look at statistics-keeping methods at ULM

presented byMegan Lowe, Reference Librarian, ULMKaren Niemla, Reference Library, ULM

1Session OverviewA Brief History of ULM LibraryULM Library TodayStatistics-Keeping, 1960s 2008The Change, 2009The CommitteeThe MethodThe Technical StuffQ & A

STATS2ULM LibraryA Brief History

Bry Hall, 19393OriginsThe University of Louisiana at Monroe formerly Ouachita Parish Junior College, Northeast Center of Louisiana State University, Northeast Louisiana State College, and Northeast Louisiana University has had four libraries since being established in 1931

The Library has gone through four buildings: Brown Hall, Bry Hall, Sandel Library, and the current 7-story building known as the University Library

4Brown Hall

Ouachita Parish Junior College

5Brown HallFirst building (and for a while, the only) on the campusHoused classrooms, administrative offices, and student activities, in addition to the LibraryThe first librarian was Mary Elizabeth Eason; a second librarian, Mary Clay, started in 1933The initial collection was composed of five hundred books and fifteen periodical subscriptionsThe Librarys hours were 8:15 am to 4:15pm

6Bry Hall

Northeast Center of Louisiana State University

7Bry HallBry Hall was specifically built to house the Library; it opened its doors in 1939By then, in 1934, the Library had acquired a new librarian, Sue Hefley; she left in 1940 and was replaced by Mary ClayIn 1948 the Library became a member of the newly formed Louisiana State Documents Depository Program, at that time only one of two programs in existence (California was first)There were classrooms on the second floor

8Bry HallA side note on Ms. Hefley: she got rid of the practice of charging fines for overdue materials in 1938, stating:

The library believes that students should return books because it is the thing to do, not because they will have to pay a fine if the book is not returned. This is a new idea in library training. It is good training for life to do a thing because it should be done, not because one will be punished if it is not done. (Pow Wow, February 11, 1938)

This new idea in library training did not endure, and fines were reinstated in 1956.

9Sandel Hall

10Sandel LibraryOpened its doors in the spring of 1963; Bry Hall was renovated for the use of other departments its now houses the art department and Bry GalleryNamed for Percy Sandel, Sr., a District Attorney who became Judge of the Fourth Judicial District and was significant in the establishment of a junior college in MonroeIn 1977 the addition of a third floor to the two-story building was completedNow houses the campus bookstore, Admissions, and the Museum of Natural History

11University Library Today

12University LibraryOpened its doors on April 12, 19997 floorsThe Library is housed on floors 1-5Campus Administration the President, Provost, and Vice Presidents are housed on the 6th floor7th floor is a conference centerThe building is divided into two sides: the library side (floors 1-5) and the other side (floors 6-7)Has a working belltower with five cast bronze bells and three clock faces

13University LibraryComputer lab with 100+ computers + 2 printers7 classrooms added in 2004The current reference staff is composed of four full-time librarians; several other faculty also man the desk at least once a day; in some cases once a weekILL LibrarianCoordinator of Technical ServicesCollection Development LibrarianAssistant DeanLA Delta CC Librarian

14Statistics-Keeping 1960s - 2008

15Statistics, 1960s

16Details & ChangesThis is about as far back as the stats go that weve been able to find there might be one set for 1962-1963During this time period reference was decentralized there were first two and then three desks covering Humanities, Social Sciences, and Sciences Categories of questions include General and ResearchWeve been unable to find the day-to-day method of keeping track just the composite totals by monthThere are composite totals up through 1969The only change in stats was moving from 2 desks to 3

17Statistics, 1970s

18Statistics, 1970s

Statistics, 1970s

Details & ChangesDecentralized reference continued into the 1970s with three desks, Humanities, Social Sciences, & Sciences - at least, according to the stats up and through June 1972Statistics for 1973, 1974, and 1975 are sketchy and sporadic at best, and dont exist for 1976-1978The composite total stats sheets remain similar to the 1960s though gridlines are presentWe were able to find at least one set of individual tracking sheets with hash marksOtherwise, its difficult to discuss stats in the 1970s21Statistics, 1980s

Statistics, 1980s

Statistics, 1980s

Details & ChangesStats in the 1980s were pretty consistent composite totals exist for the entirety of the decadeBy this time for sure reference had become centralizedNew categories for questions emerged: Directional, Reference General, and Reference ResearchStatistics related to searches began to appear in the 1980s, including stats for Dialog, BRS, and SDCAdditionally, the cost of these searches was also calculated and added to stats trackingWe even have some daily tracking sheets for parts of the 80s! There were a lot of changes in the 80s!25Statistics, 1990s

Statistics, 1990s

Statistics, 1990s

Statistics, 1990s

Statistics, 1990s

Statistics, 1990s

Statistics, 1990s

Statistics, 1990s

Details & ChangesDaily stat sheets are in abundance. Monthly composite sheets appeared with more regularity; they included stats on questions, bibliographic instruction, reference items shelved, and searches in databases Collection and usage statistics were also found, as well as a Notis problem log, a log for SOLAR searches, and a sign-in sheet for Netscape access (time limits)The items shelved stats continue to appear throughout the mid-1990s but disappear around the time the current library opened34Details & ChangesQuestion categories were changed and expanded: DirectionalBasic ReferenceExtended ReferenceHardwareStats for the databases started out regularly kept but dwindled perhaps because of the availability of that kind of tracking by individual sitesThe 1990s saw a lot of changes!Statistics, 2000 - 2008

Still using the same stats gathering sheet adapted in 1996, and the same cumulative stats sheet from 1993.36Details & ChangesBy the 2000s, items shelved disappearedThe tracking of hardware problems, which began in the 1990s, continued along with the addition of software problem tracking; later the two categories were collapsed togetherFor a brief period, a new category was added Email Reference but it didnt last longThe daily sheets also continued, with monthly composite sheetsThe tracking of database statistics completely disappeared from the monthly composites37The Change, 2009

38

This is how it was: we'd have one legal-sized sheet of paper (one-sided) with this grid on it, tracking different kinds of questions at different times of the day. It covered directional, basic, extended, email, and software/equipment problems. Each day we'd get a new sheet, and at the end of the month the sheets would be summarized by hand and then stapled together. Isn't that a lot of paper? 39

Oh yes it is. Quite a lot. Im pretty this isnt all of it. So I made a new one, which I've since lost. I talked to her about it, and found out that we'd misunderstood each other. Eventually I found out that the intended purpose of the new statistics on reference instruction file is not only to keep track of new statistics, but the old ones also. Now that's different. That's a pretty big data set, actually. I also found out that Megan Lowe was already thinking of doing the archiving part, so the size of project was then quite apparent. It went from this big to THIS BIG.40

And we talked about it some more, and... during this conversation I learned that I was supposed to be keeping my reference instruction on the desk calendar. Which I had never ever done. It look 1.5 years for me to realize that. I just thought it was used for room scheduling. My bad. Fortunately I had my instruction recorded somewhere else too, But... does this look like something you'd be using to keep statistics on anything?

[Megan: Read this part with a sense of humor. Im bringing it up as a) one of those things that just happens and b) concrete proof that something needed to be done about the stats procedure]41

At the end of each month someone would write down the stuff on the calendar onto this sheet. Why didn't we just put it on the sheet first? I dunno. That's just what we did. There's nothing wrong with it. People just make routines and just keep following them forever because they seem to work. which is fine; we all do it. But it also means that it's hard to change at times because youre used to something. Moving on takes thought, but its worth it.42

We knew we wanted to do it electronically. That's what we wanted to move on to. So I started by investigating MS Access. And I thought it was great. I figured out that we could have a searchable database. Considering how big the job was, I thought, maybe we need to use serious business software? So I looked into MS Access. I made a test DB that actually worked. And I liked it. It was great. "Imagine being able to know how many BIs one faculty member has requested *ever*!" Or the number of sessions and students a Librarian have done *ever.*!

So I emailed my file to everyone and we all figured out that it was probably too complicated. All we really needed to know was how many students had been BI'ed, not a breakdown to, like, demographics. So we didn't need Access. We need something else, and we needed to asses our needs, because you have to do that before choosing a format.43

At some point I also checked out Open Office, to try something non-proprietary and free. I didn't like their DB program as much. It was a lot harder to use. I personally don't Microsoft, but they deserve credit when it is due, and Access is a good product. The spreadsheets work just fine, though.44

Eventually, it was quite clear that even though I had been asked to do 'something' about the statistics, I knew that I had to ask everyone in the dept. about it because it was going to change the procedure for everyone at reference, and probably for /years/, seeing how routines tend to stick. Cooperation is key when everyone is involved, cooperation is possible when everyone is involved. The ref. dept. collectively decided to have a meeting to talk about what we all were concerned about, what was important to us in reference statistics, what we liked, didn't like, and etc. This doesn't seem like a big deal, but actually this is a really big deal. Talking about it brings it into focus. As far as I'm concerned, this project didn't really exist before this meeting.45

On whim I brought my laptop and typed unofficial minutes into notepad, which I still have. This turned out to be very important later, because I was always looking back at it to remember what was decided and what was discussed. So don't forget to write things down. 46

eliminate hardware-software questions and email categoriesrecord department and # of pupilsExcel

We decided to eliminate hardware-software questions, because it's either directional or in-depth depending on how hard it is to solve something, and email, because these days it doesn't matter how people reach you. I mean, you don't see telephone on this list, so why track email? The only reasons to track by medium is if its new, like IM or smoke signals. We also decided that we didn't need to know which profs. were coming to us or the course names, but we did want to know what Schools they were in, so we'd have a general idea of what disciplines come to us and which don't.47

We decided then that Excel would be great for the file, because Excel could have multiple sheets in a file. Karen Cook, whom some of you may remember, drew a diagram of that, because she had more Excel experience than me, and I used her advice to make the file. We all also liked .XLS because it was easy to use and it was probably going to be readable for a while, because it's been around a long time. 48

When you think you want to keep your data "forever," you need a file that won't become unreadable later. MS products are proprietary. They could be abandoned, or MS could go bankrupt someday, you never know. Lotus 123 seemed like a good idea at the time, right? 49

Access files are clunky, but .XLS spreadsheets aren't frightfully hard to read and converting them to other things isn't that bad, so if ULM dropped support for it, wed still be O.K. So .XLS was a safe file format to choose, we thought.50

The changes began with the recording.

One thing we didn't like about ref stats before was the fact that we had to total and add all these marks at the end of the day. This was annoying. I'm terrible at this, so I'd sometimes do it over to check it and it was a different number! Then I'd have to do it again. Excel, as we know, can do totals for us if you tell it what cells to add up. This is the primary factor in all design of these tables. we just need to let the sums work. Yet we agreed that always having Excel open when things get busy could get messy, so we decided that we'd still use paper tick marks and then enter those into Excel which would add them. But using a whole legal sheet for one day? 51

Think of the trees!52

But we still had a whole pile of these things to get rid of, and they weren't even the right stats. So I created a new sheet, broken down by directional, basic, and extended53

and printed it on the back of the old ones, and then we correct the old ones by hand like this to use them. Now it's 4 days per sheet of paper54

and when a day is over and entered into the XLS, it's blacked out.55

.and when the sheet is full we just throw it out. No more archiving these. Done. No more. The spreadsheet is the digital object to be kept for archival purposes.56ulm.edu/reference/ref-stats-2009.xls

But don't worry. I always knew how to keep the file safe, and we also needed to make it possible for everyone to see and approve the stats sheets, liked we'd done in print. Two birds with one stone, here. Each month I uploaded the stats file to the reference directory on our ULM web space, so the file is web accessible athttp://www.ulm.edu/reference/ref-stats-2009.xls Then I email a reminder each month to the persons concerned. I also keep some older files in here with dates so that we can go back in case of an accident. I will not be keeping these at the end of the year.57

I also keep some older files in here with dates so that we can go back in case of a human-created accident. I will not be keeping those at the end of the year.58

Now the file itself. 59

What I ultimately did was create a file with 12 month sheets in it. Each year will have its own file.60

Each day gets a total for all questions61

Then there's a total of totals, which is done with a simple sum of a whole column, that shows totals for types too, shaded in grey62

Instruction is kept in these columns nearby, with numbers of classes, like sections of a single course, and totals of students. At first these weren't here. I had an individual sheet for statistics, but after I got some to enter, I found out that I couldn't make it fit right. So, I made some columns to stick them into, and their totals. It was how I shouldve done it before.63

I also stuck a little image calendar in the corner so we'd know what day was what. Were closed on Friday evenings and Saturdays.64

So I make strikethru text on the days and hours when we're closed, so that it shall be known that it's not that no one wanted reference that day, it's just that there were no patrons.65But wait,theres more! 66

Earlier this year I became the library's webmaster, which I'm grateful for, so of course online activity's important to me. ULM as a whole is now using Google analytics to keep statists about web use. They're anonymous and don't interfere with user privacy, so it's library-save. This is us on the top content list for the whole ulm.edu domain. 67

Whats this got to do with reference? Plenty, and our Dean has asked that I now send him a copy of this every month as of this semester. So that's actually a part of our statistics now. Our most popular pages as of last week are our database pages. This shows where our users are going. What does that mean? Could mean a lot of things. They're just stats.Weve only recently started using GA. Well see what it does in the future.68Known IssuesThings are going quite well since implementation on April 1st. But there are a few problems69

Sometimes people mark stats on the wrong day, or enter them in the wront part of the file. I always look over the used sheets and double-check them myself. sometimes I find errors, but usually not. As far as I know, I'm the only person who does. I always said form the start, don't put it in the trash until you're sure it's ready.70

It's assumed that we're only answering reference questions at the desk, although this isn't necessarily true. I have the reference email notify me if it gets an email. If I'm at home on Saturday night and I get an email like this, I'll answer it if I'm feeling good. Do I ever remember to enter that on the sheet later? Never. So maybe we need to just do them all at once. They're dated, after all. But really, it could also just be my own problem that I need to be more mindful of.71ulm.edu/reference/ref-stats-2009.xls

Another little problem Ive got now is that the stats are supposed to be uploaded to the server and etc. and the email about it is supposed to be sent on the first day of the month. That's today. But I am not at the reference desk. So I can't do it because---72I AM HERE IN BATON ROUGE, TALKING TO YOU!

THANK YOU VERY MUCH!73Any questions?

Keepin Track: FYI & ResourcesPresentation URL http://bambam.info/luc09/refstats.html Stats Page http://www.ulm.edu/reference/ref-stats-2009.xlsULM Reference Page http://www.ulm.edu/library/referencedesk.htmlOur Contact InfoMegan Lowe, lowe@ulm.eduKaren Niemla, niemla@ulm.edu

Thanks for coming!If you have questions or comments, please feel free to contact us!