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Quoting "Walker, David" <[log in to unmask]>: > 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 This is an interesting example of how the interface guides (or constrains, in this case) users. If you want to do a title "search" you have only the browse option. The FCLA system has both title keyword search and title browse. In that catalog, only 3% of the users opted to browse. In the figure above, all we know is that some percentage of users wanted to search on title, and browse was the only option. kc > > 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 > -- Karen Coyle [log in to unmask] http://kcoyle.net ph: 1-510-540-7596 m: 1-510-435-8234 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 1-510-435-8234 end_of_the_skype_highlighting skype: kcoylenet