Why count internet usage?

[David R. Newman]

On Mon, 8 Sep 1997 21:09:43 -0700 "Gerry Rowland, State Library of Iowa" 
<gerryr at netins.net> wrote:

> Internet use statistics are a high priority for libraries at the local,
> state and national levels.

Why? Or more precisely, exactly which research questions can be answered 
by mere hit counts?
 
> Counting hits by local users against remote Internet servers

This only tells you the time pattern of WWW usage in the library, and the 
popularity of different WWW information sources among your library users. 
It tells you nothing about how useful, relevant or interesting the 
information is. Nor does it tell you why the site is popular, and whether 
it is a result of technical factors (indexing, search results, time to 
download, time to connect) or factors to do with the material and the 
reader's interests.

> The problem had been getting a count of hits from
> an Internet service provider when the library had a dial up connection.

Any proxy server can generate a log that can be analysed from your 
viewpoint (as long as the ISP has static IP addresses). This proxy server 
could be at the ISP, on a regional machine set up by FSCS, or even on the 
dial-up PC if you use one of the combined off-line browsers and proxy 
servers like Near Site (http://www.nearsite.com/).

> At today's meeting of the FSCS group, we learned that the command
> "about:global" in the Location: box of the Netscape browser returns a list
> of files downloaded and a count of total files.

You need to experiment. These figures might only be since the last time 
the history or cache was cleared. In any case, these figures would not 
tell you to which sites the hits went, or when they were made.

Think a bit about what sort of statistics would help you run a better 
library. Most of the questions relate to the needs and perceived benefits 
of library patrons, and how well the WWW service meets those needs. So 
you actually need to ask them - be it in interviews, face-to-face or 
on-line questionnaires, or in single questions automatically presented to 
a small random sample of accesses (the technique Jacob Palme used to 
research e-mail use and its benefits and costs to staff of the Swedish 
Defence Organization).
----------------------
Dr. David R. Newman, Queen's University Belfast,
School of Managment, BELFAST BT7 1NN, UK
Tel. +44-1232-335011 FAX +44-1232-249881
http://www.qub.ac.uk/mgt/ mailto:d.r.newman at qub.ac.uk