Site Usage Statistics

[Christy Hightower]

We were interested to see Judy Din's posting about benchmarking web
statistics.  Actually, we're in the throes of writing up the findings of a
study we conducted which investigated the web stats from 13 ARL
institutions' Sci-Tech libraries.  Stay tuned for news of our published
findings. 

Some of the questions we struggled with were:

Who are your peers?  We found that a "Web Peer" is a very different 
animal from an "ARL Peer".

What numbers are best to compare?  Hits have come under fire in the 
literature, but often that's all you have.  

What pages are best to compare?  In our study we naively embarked on a
plan to identify and collect data for just those pages that most closely
matched our own library's Sci-Tech subject scope.  It took our Computer
Resource Specialist at least two hours per insitution to retrieve and
process the files (yes, we had grant money).  If website managers agree on 
what to count and have our statistics packages and/or webservers properly
configured to isolate just that data, the process would, of course, be
much easier.  Definitions will play a large role in establishing standards
either on a formal or informal basis. 

We will also be considering those factors that influence the statistics 
(presence of a "home" button on lower level pages, amount of useful 
content on each page, internal vs. external hits to pages, etc.)

As regards to reporting web statistics to ARL, that's a big question.  Are
web statistics any more misleading than other statistics already reported
to ARL, such as circulation counts or reference queries?  Would they 
serve some useful purpose (either for library directors or for page 
creators)?

So, bottom line, we're still working on these and other questions.  Our 
study won't provide the definitive answers, but hopefully all of our 
efforts will save others some time.  

Christy Hightower			Julie Sih
Engineering Information Specialist	Corporate Programs Librarian
UCSD Science & Engineering Library	UCSD Libraries
http://scilib.ucsd.edu			jsih at ucsd.edu
chightow at ucsd.edu