[WEB4LIB] Re: Reporting web statistics

[Dan Lester]

At 10:58 AM 6/22/99 -0700, John Little wrote:
>  It's not helped by statistics programs which claim to calculate things
>which cannot really be calculated, only estimated, with varying degrees of 
>accuracy. The simple fact is that certain data which we would like to know 
>and which we expect to know are simply not available.

This is true, of course, but also true of almost every other statistic that 
is collected by librarians to "show their worth" or to appease their 
bosses.  Yes, we know pretty well how many books the library owns.  But 
what does that mean?  Not much.  Others such as door counts, reference 
transactions, items circulated, and so forth may have marginal value for 
planning of staffing needs, but certainly don't tell anything about the 
value or utility of the library.

And the same is true of any web stats we obtain, though they may indeed 
help us personally by making our bosses happy with us.

dan


--
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Dan Lester, 3577 East Pecan, Boise, ID 83716 USA 208-383-0165
dan at 84.com   http://www.84.com/  http://www.postcard.org/