statistics/Javascript vs. ActiveX vs. ?

[DEANNE LUCK]

Hello,

We are preparing for a major upgrade to our public access PCs this summer,
and I hope all you smart and knowledgable people can help me with a few 
questions.  First, the situation:  We will be running WinNT and networking
to an NT server.  We want to use a web page for our "menu" and use
Internet Explorer (modified with the IE admin kit) as our browser.  Our
web server is MS IIS on an NT server.

My first question regards use statistics.  What programs are there that
will measure what is being used on our PACs and for how long?  The only 
program I've found that might do this is SofTrack.  Surely there are others.
If anyone else has ideas on performance measures for electronic resources
I'd really like to hear them.  The issue I'm concerned about is that if we
set up easy-to-use and informative computer stations, patrons won't have
to ask as many reference questions, and statistics will go down.  So even 
though we are providing (presumably) better service to more people, the 
statistics in the annual report imply that we are providing less service.  
What other statistics can we collect to offset this impression?

My second question concerns going "beyond HTML" on our 'menu' page. 
Since this is a page that will be used in a controlled environment, I'd
like to experiment with some of the more advanced things like Javascript
or ActiveX.  Given this environment, what is the best language to learn?
I haven't used anything more complex than HTML and CSS in the past, but 
I want to branch out a bit.

Thanks,
DeAnne Luck
Electronic Resources Librarian
Austin Peay State University
LuckDL at apsu01.apsu.edu