Sorry for late reply, just catching up. In my last usability session, 3 of 3 participants typed "library" in the university home page search box--at least one person tried to use the university site navigation at first but couldn't find it since it was under "University Libraries" rather than "Library". At least one of those people had never been to the library site ever before, so wasn't corrupted by instruction sessions.

Just an anecdote, but may be helpful.

Margaret Heller
Digital Services Librarian
Loyola University Chicago
773-508-2686

-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Matthew Sherman
Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2013 8:48 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Academic Library Website Question

Wow, I am impressed by the variety of replies.  A lot of good points have been made and this really helps give thought and credence to our argument to free our library website.  I am in agreement with many of the general points made and find the suggestions helpful, this will be a bit of a fight to get the library site were it should be to it is a worthwhile one and your insights should help us.  Thanks everyone for your input.  I've sent this discussion around to my coworkers to look over as well, it really helps.

Matt


On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 5:28 PM, Cary Gordon <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> The difficulty lies in the details.
>
> I don't understand the distinction between "organic findability" and 
> "direct going to the URIs" (presumably URLs, which go somewhere). 
> While going directly to resources would skew your stats, presumably in 
> a good way, I don't see that they would impact your findability.
>
> It should be easy to distinguish between traffic from search engines, 
> links from your home page and direct links, which can either be 
> embedded in resources like courseware, papers, and others or just 
> typed in directly or using a URL shortening service. If your system 
> can't make those distinctions, you should move to an analytics system that does.
>
> I will dedicate next year to developing organic fundability.
>
> Cary
>
> On Dec 17, 2013, at 1:09 PM, Lisa Rabey <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 3:54 PM, Cary Gordon <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
> >> My key point, and likely the only point of note is: "Your library 
> >> stats
> should tell the tale of how folks are getting there."
> >>
> >> While these data won't necessarily lead to great predictions of 
> >> future
> behavior, as the institution might unintentionally (or intentionally) 
> blocking some desirable access, they should give some empirical 
> evidence of what is happening now.
> >>
> >> Cary
> >
> >
> > I don't disagree with you. But stats are not enough. The difficulty 
> > lies (lays?) that we have organic findability before the semester 
> > starts, then we teach info lit classes for 2-3 solid months where we 
> > are direct going to the URIs which then spikes AND skews the data, 
> > hence the problem of using stats.
> >
> > Now if you have method to separate organic fundability from our 
> > teaching classes so I have a better/bigger picture of how people are 
> > finding us, I'm all ears.
> >
> >
> > Lisa M. Rabey | @pnkrcklibrarian
> >
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------------
> > An Unreliable Narrator: http://exitpursuedbyabear.net Cunning Tales 
> > from a Systems Librarian: http://lisa.rabey.net
>