[WEB4LIB] predicting future public computer needs

[Richard A. Edwards]

> How have other list members 'predicted' workstation needs?  Do you use
>FTEs, number of available resources, in house use statistics, etc?  I
>would be interested in any formulas, arguments, or rationalizations
>you've used to justify predictions of workstation needs or requests for
>additional public computers.  thanks. 

Good questions. We were recently wondering about adding more (must have 
as many as we can get) and I did a brief, one week survey at random times 
during the middle of our academic quarter to see what percentage of our 
machines were in use.

We have 19 PCs, using Netscape, with a library home page that provides 
WebPAC (Innovative) for our catalog and other online web resources 
(including Ebscohost, Proquest, and various web links), and an FTE of 
just under 4000.

We did NOT check every hour or half hour (randomly 4-5 times a day) and 
only did one week of our quarter so the numbers are NOT conclusive.

The "high use" periods for each day were:

Monday	 	 11:30		58%
Tuesday 	  2:30		74%
Wednesday	  8:05		79%
Thursday	 12:30		74%
Friday		 11:15		63%
Saturday	  2:10		37%
Sunday 	  	  4:25		53%

The average use was:

Monday		30%
Tuesday		36%
Wednesday	53%
Thursday	35%
Friday		33%
Saturday	25%
Sunday		21%

And though we have a few email sites blocked, the machines can do almost
any sort of web surfing (they do not have speakers nor does our Netscape
have many plug-ins nor do they have other software). As part of counting
"use" our staff briefly scanned the screens from a distance to see if they
were library catalog type screens or not so we could determine our amount
of non-library use of our PCs. The average non-library use of those 
machines in use was around 10%, though there was one time when it peaked 
at 53%.

Rich Edwards
Director
Instructional Technology Project
The Evergreen State College
Olympia, WA