Busier Than Ever: Rethinking Reference Statistics For The Digital Age

Welch, Jeanie M.

Title:

Busier Than Ever: Rethinking Reference Statistics For The Digital Age

dc.contributor.author	Welch, Jeanie M.
dc.contributor.corporatename	University of North Carolina at Charlotte
dc.date.accessioned	2007-03-12T23:21:40Z
dc.date.available	2007-03-12T23:21:40Z
dc.date.issued	2007-02-23
dc.description	Jeanie M. Welch is a Professor and Business Reference Librarian at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She holds a B.A. and M.A.L. from the University of Denver and a Master of International Management from Thunderbird, The Garvin School of International Management. She is the author of two books and numerous articles in professional journals and winner of the 1996 Dun & Bradstreet Online Champion Award.	en
dc.description.abstract	Reference service has evolved in the digital age to include email, live chat, and Web pages. This had led to a need to include these new means of providing service into the statistical reporting of reference activity. As traditional numbers for reference service have stagnated or declined, the inclusion of email, live chat, and Web pages in statistical reporting provides a more accurate picture of reference-related activities. This paper discusses going beyond the traditional measures of reference service (i.e., number of reference/directional questions and number of telephone questions received at the reference desk) to include the number of email queries received by individual reference librarians, the number of queries received in live chat sessions (both local and consortium-based group chat), and the number of visits to reference-generated library Web sites. This paper presents the challenges of including these new categories in reference service statistical reporting and proposes a model for their inclusion. These challenges include the need to expand the traditional statistical reporting criteria required by government and professional agencies and the need for standardization in reporting new types of reference transactions, including virtual reference. This paper also discusses the new National Information Standards Organization's NISO Z39.7-2004 standards that include the reporting of the usage of library-generated Web pages and e-mail and virtual reference queries in a reference department. The discussion includes two specific subcategories in the new NISO standards (7.3.1 Virtual Reference Transactions and 7.7.1.5 Virtual Visits) that provide definitions for these types of reference activities. Gathering these new statistics will be discussed as well as the importance of including such statistics provides a more complete of reference activity at a time when traditional forms of reference service have declined.	en
dc.format.mimetype	audio/mpeg
dc.format.mimetype	application/pdf
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/1853/13642
dc.language.iso	en_US	en
dc.publisher	Georgia Institute of Technology	en
dc.subject	Users and usability	en
dc.subject	Metrics and statistics for libraries
dc.title	Busier Than Ever: Rethinking Reference Statistics For The Digital Age	en
dc.type	Text
dc.type	Audio
dc.type.genre	Presentation
dc.type.genre	Proceedings
dspace.entity.type	Publication
local.contributor.corporatename	Library
local.relation.ispartofseries	Electronic Resources and Libraries Conference
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relation.isSeriesOfPublication	1bc138f4-a871-4adf-a5c0-383f29cc06ed