InfoEyes Usage Report

December 2004

Compiled by John Mugford (jmugford@stlib.state.nm.us)

Note: The InfoEyes service had a soft launch on March 1, but activity did not really pick up until March 17, and the enhanced communication software was not utilized until March 22. On April 29 public access to the QuestionPoint Enhanced mode was discontinued. It was replaced on June 7, 2004 with iVocalize. Thus during the month of May 2004 patrons had no access to an enhanced mode of communication, only email and basic text chat.

Definitions

• Total Sessions: The sum of all the discrete sessions recorded in the set of closed interactions for the month being reported.
• Countable Sessions: Two situations caused some sessions to be discounted:
  
  1) If two or more sessions in close temporal proximity to each other were clearly from the same patron with the same information need, the cluster of sessions was counted as only one session.
  2) If a session clearly displayed a failure to communicate (e.g., because of basic system problems, or the patron never responded and expressed the need), it was not counted as a session.
  
  
• Real Sessions: Sessions that appeared to involve patrons with real information needs.
• Interest Sessions: Sessions that appeared to be from non-InfoEyes team members who were more interested in just seeing or testing the software or service than in satisfying a real information need. Often these visitors were professional colleagues from other libraries.
• Practice Sessions: Sessions that appeared to be test and practice sessions between two or more InfoEyes team members.
• Timestamping: Sessions are timestamped when they commence. In the case of email questions, that means the time they are submitted, not when they are answered by an InfoEyes reference provider. The timestamp is GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) minus six hours. Evidently, no adjustments are made to the timestamp when daylight savings time commences in April and concludes in October.
  
  

Usage Report

	March	April	May	June	July	August	Sept	Oct	Nov	Dec	YTD	YTD
	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	Totals	%
Days in month	31	30	31	30	31	31	31	31	30	31	307
Days with activity	14	24	15	19	18	12	8	9	8	6	133
Total sessions	100	101	25	32	23	14	12	12	9	9	337
Countable sessions	72	73	23	28	23	14	9	11	8	7	268
Countable as % of Total	72.00%	72.28%	92.00%	87.50%	100.00%	100.00%	75.00%	92.00%	89.00%	77.78%	87.28%
Avg Total Sessions per Active Day	7.14	4.21	1.67	1.68	1.28	1.17	1.50	1.33	1.13	1.50	2.53
Avg Countable Sess. per Active Day	5.14	3.04	1.53	1.47	1.28	1.17	1.13	1.22	1.00	1.16	2.02
Total Real Sessions	46	75	21	29	20	7	8	12	8	7	233	69.14%
Total Interest Sessions	9	7	3	2	3	2	4	0	1	2	33	9.79%
Total Practice Sessions	32	18	1	1	0	5	0	0	0	0	57	16.91%
Total Unknown Sessions	13	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	14	4.15%
(total sessions)	100	101	25	32	23	14	12	12	9	9	337
	March	April	May	June	July	August	Sept	Oct	Nov	Dec	YTD	YTD
	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	Totals	%
Countable Real Sessions	39	51	19	25	20	7	8	11	8	8	196	72.06%
Countable Interest Sessions	9	6	3	2	3	2	1	0	1	2	29	10.66%
Countable Practice Sessions	19	15	1	1	0	5	0	0	0	0	41	15.07%
Countable Unknown Sessions	5	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	6	2.21%
(countable sessions)	72	73	23	28	23	14	9	11	9	10	272
	March	April	May	June	July	August	Sept	Oct	Nov	Dec	YTD	YTD
	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	Totals	%
Sunday Countable Sessions	3	1	1	1	0	1	1	0	0	0	8	2.94%
Monday Countable Sessions	5	15	3	6	3	3	2	3	4	4	48	17.65%
Tuesday Countable Sessions	10	6	1	6	3	4	1	1	1	1	34	12.50%
Wednesday Countable Sessions	16	8	8	7	4	1	2	2	3	2	53	19.49%
Thursday Countable Sessions	24	22	4	4	5	1	2	2	1	2	67	24.63%
Friday Countable Sessions	8	11	2	2	5	1	1	4	0	0	34	12.50%
Saturday Countable Sessions	6	10	4	2	3	3	0	0	0	0	28	10.29%
(days of week countable sessions)	72	73	23	28	23	14	9	12	9	9	272
	March	April	May	June	July	August	Sept	Oct	Nov	Dec	YTD	YTD
	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	Totals	%
midnight to 1:00 Countable Sessions	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0.37%
1:00 to 2:00 Countable Sessions	0	0	3	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	3	1.10%
2:00 to 3:00 Countable Sessions	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.00%
3:00 to 4:00 Countable Sessions	0	0	0	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	2	0.74%
4:00 to 5:00 Countable Sessions	0	0	2	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	3	1.10%
5:00 to 6:00 Countable Sessions	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.00%
6:00 to 7:00 Countable Sessions	2	1	0	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	5	1.84%
7:00 to 8:00 Countable Sessions	2	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	1	0	4	1.47%
8:00 to 9:00 Countable Sessions	6	4	1	0	1	1	0	2	2	0	17	6.25%
9:00 to 10:00 Countable Sessions	9	7	1	1	1	4	0	1	1	0	25	9.19%
10:00 to 11:00 Countable Sessions	7	9	3	5	3	4	2	1	0	0	34	12.50%
11:00 to noon Countable Sessions	6	7	2	1	1	1	1	0	1	3	23	8.46%
noon to 13:00 Countable Sessions	7	9	0	3	2	0	0	1	1	1	24	8.82%
13:00 to 14:00 Countable Sessions	8	8	2	0	1	1	0	1	1	0	22	8.09%
14:00 to 15:00 Countable Sessions	0	5	1	1	1	1	0	1	0	0	10	3.68%
15:00 to 16:00 Countable Sessions	9	12	1	7	2	0	2	0	1	2	36	13.24%
16:00 to 17:00 Countable Sessions	3	4	2	0	1	0	2	2	0	1	15	5.51%
17:00 to 18:00 Countable Sessions	1	5	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	7	2.57%
18:00 to 19:00 Countable Sessions	2	1	2	1	2	0	0	2	0	1	11	4.04%
19:00 to 20:00 Countable Sessions	1	0	0	2	0	0	0	0	1	0	4	1.47%
20:00 to 21:00 Countable Sessions	3	0	0	2	3	2	1	0	0	0	11	4.04%
21:00 to 22:00 Countable Sessions	4	1	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	1	7	2.57%
22:00 to 23:00 Countable Sessions	1	0	2	1	0	0	0	1	0	0	5	1.84%
23:00 to midnight Countable Sessions	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.00%
unknown				2	1	0	0	0	0	0	3	1.10%
(hours of day countable sessions)	72	73	23	28	23	14	9	12	9	9	272
	March	April	May	June	July	August	Sept	Oct	Nov	Dec	YTD	YTD
	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	Totals	%
Total email sessions	27	14	19	24	20	8	10	10	9	9	150	44.51%
Total text chat sessions	29	24	6	4	1	5	0	2	0	0	69	20.47%
Total enhanced sessions	44	63	0	4	2	1	2	0	0	0	116	34.42%
(total sessions by mode)	100	101	25	32	23	14	12	12	9	9	337
	March	April	May	June	July	August	Sept	Oct	Nov	Dec	YTD
	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	Average
Avg response time: all email sessions (hrs)	NA	15.26	14.39	12.49	27.47	20.63	16.83	24.73	77.30	14.54	24.85
Avg session length: all chat sessions (hrs)	NA	0.11	0.17	0.12	1.83	0.06	NA	0.11	0.00	0.00	0.30
Avg session length: all enhanced (hrs)	NA	0.07	NA	0.35	0.23	0.08	0.12	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.11
	March	April	May	June	July	August	Sept	Oct	Nov	Dec	YTD	YTD
	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	Totals	%
Countable email sessions	26	14	18	21	20	8	8	10	8	7	140	55.34%
Countable text chat sessions	21	17	5	3	1	5	0	1	0	0	53	20.95%
Countable enhanced sessions	25	42	0	4	2	1	1	0	0	0	75	29.64%
(countable sessions by mode)	72	73	23	28	23	14	9	11	8		253
	March	April	May	June	July	August	Sept	Oct	Nov	Dec	YTD
	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	Totals
FirstSearch Sessions	55	22	41	79	64						261
Average no. of searches per session	5.27	5.50	1.85	3.33	2.94						3.59
	March	April	May	June	July	August	Sept	Oct	Nov	Dec	YTD	YTD
	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	2004	Totals	%
FirstSearch Searches
ABI Inform	0	0	0	4	1						5	0.53%
ArticleFirst	91	58	12	23	12						196	20.90%
Book Review Digest	2	0	0	2	11						15	1.60%
Eric	30	8	4	11	2						55	5.86%
FactSearch	24	5	0	3	9						41	4.37%
General Science Abstracts	20	3	2	14	9						48	5.12%
MEDLINE	19	0	6	22	20						67	7.14%
Periodical Abstracts	0	0	0	101	83						184	19.62%
Readers Guide Abstracts	20	0	10	26	10						66	7.04%
SIRS	0	0	0	11	1						12	1.28%
World Almanac	13	7	0	1	2						23	2.45%
WorldCat	71	40	42	45	28						226	24.09%
(total FirstSearch searches)	290	121	76	263	188						938

Very Tentative Conclusions

• InfoEyes appears to be meeting the anticipated need.
  
  
• We appear to be getting questions from both print-impaired and sighted individuals.
  
• The information needs expressed are a good mix of topics related to print-impairments and general topics.
  
  
• Several repeat customers of InfoEyes already have emerged, which indicates that they are finding the service useful.
  
  
• Activity measured in terms of countable questions by the day of the week seems to exhibit the typical bell-shaped curve, with the peak on Thursday.
  
  
• Activity measured in terms of countable questions by hour of the day is beginning to indicate the usual peaks in the mid-morning and mid-afternoon hours, but it is too soon to tell. Because InfoEyes is a multi-state service across four time zones, and because all activity is recorded as Greenwich Mean Time minus six hours, this measure of activity by hour of the day is an approximation.