The stats reported in this paper might help: http://homes.ukoln.ac.uk/~kg249/publ/RenardusFinal.pdf
-----Original Message----- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Bill Dueber Sent: 03 May 2010 19:09 To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU 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