Here are some stats from Cal State San Marcos for the past 6 1/2 years (2003-10) . All searches other than keyword are browse searches.
keyword = 596,111
title = 158,761
author = 59,293
subject = 23,692
call number = 9,477
form / genre = 4,838
other numbers = 14,636
So:
keyword = 596,111
browse = 270,697
These stats only tracked searches that were performed from the catalog home page [1] or that of the library website [2]. Any subsequent searches performed inside the catalog itself are not counted here.
I'm not sure if this is really showing that a browse display is popular here, though. I suspect a good number of users (other than librarians) were expecting the title and author searches to behave like the keyword search. But those options are browse searches, so they generate hits in favor of the browse.
--Dave
[1] http://library.csusm.edu/catalog/
[2] http://biblio.csusm.edu/
==================
David Walker
Library Web Services Manager
California State University
http://xerxes.calstate.edu
________________________________________
From: Code for Libraries [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bill Dueber [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, May 03, 2010 11:08 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [CODE4LIB] A call for your OPAC (or other system) statistics! (Browse interfaces)
I got email from a person today saying, and I quote,
"I must say that [the lack of a browse interface] come as a shock (*which
interface cannot browse??*)"
[Emphasis mine]
Here, a "browse interface" is one where you can get a giant list of all the
titles/authors/subjects whatever -- a view on the data devoid of any
searching.
Will those of you out there with "browse interfaces" in your system take a
couple minutes to send along a guesstimate of what percentage of patron
sessions involve their use?
[Note that for right now, I'm excluding "type-ahead" search boxes although
there's an obvious and, in my mind, strong argument to be made that they're
substantially similar for many types of data]
We don't have a browse interface on our (VuFind) OPAC right now. But in the
interest of paying it forward, I can tell you that in Mirlyn, our OPAC, has
numbers like this:
Pct of Mirlyn sessions, Feb/March/April 2010, which included at least one
basic
search and also:
Go to full record view 46% (we put a lot of info in search results)
Select/"favorite" an item 15%
Add a facet: 13%
Export record(s)
to email/refworks/RIS/etc. 3.4%
Send to phone (sms) 0.21%
Click on faq/help/AskUs
in footer 0.17% (324 total)
Based on 187,784 sessions, 2010.02.01 to 2010.04.31
So...anyone out there able to tell me anything about browse interfaces?
--
Bill Dueber
Library Systems Programmer
University of Michigan Library
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