The stats reported in this paper might help:
http://homes.ukoln.ac.uk/~kg249/publ/RenardusFinal.pdf
-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Bill Dueber
Sent: 03 May 2010 19:09
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
