"search our site" stats

[Blake Carver]

A while back there was a bit of a discussion on the pros and cons of a 
"search our site" search engine. At CIL in DC I noticed a couple of people 
say that people don't seem to make the distinction between a "site search", 
an "opac search" or a "database search", it's all just searching the 
libraries web site to our users.
Has anyone else been keeping any kind of logs?

Based on our logs since December I greped out some interesting numbers.
This is based on terms with 4+ occurrences, which came out to about 200 
terms. There were about 810 multiple terms total (i.e. terms that were 
searched for more than once) out of  8700 total terms. There's a lot more 
number crunching to be done here, but someone might find these preliminary 
numbers interesting. I grouped them under subjects I came up with, just to 
make it readable.


1. Specific Databases  - 1000+++ [I just gave up adding]
         "Medline", "lexus nexus", "psychlit"
2. Library services  - 300
         "ill", "reserves", "fines", renew books"
3. Jobs - 160
         "library jobs", "jobs", "employment"
4. Specific Subjects - 135
         "medicine", "native Americans", "economics"
5. Style Manuals - 105
         "APA style", "Chicago style guide"
6. Specific Print Resources - 100
         "OED", "newspapers", "dispatch"
7. WebCT - 90
         "web ct", "webct"
8. Specific Libraries on Campus  -  40
         "law library", "ehs library"
9. Unknown  - 40
         "sci", "nuenke"
10. Types of Electronic Resource  - 30
         "databases", "journal index"
11. Personal Names  -  25
         "john glenn", "john smith"
12. Ebook - 25
         "e-book", "ebook", "e book"
13. Institutions  - 20
         "oclc", "osu"

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Blake Carver
Web Librarian
The Ohio State University Libraries
carver.50 at osu.edu
see also: http://www.lisnews.com