Our library built a tool to allow web site visitors to save items from the article discovery tool, the catalog, and the journal and database finder for future use. When students save an item, they are prompted to add a tag, with their currently enrolled courses suggested. This talk will describe the results of a study of the first year's use of the tool. This presentation will explore the following topics: What kinds of students use course tags? How do items with a course compare with reading lists for those courses? How are students using the saved items?
For a downloadable version, please see http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/100350
3. Favorites
• Ex Libris’ Metalib & Aleph OPAC “My Shelf”
• Mirlyn (VuFind-ish) has “favorites”
• We extended that metaphor into new systems
as we built them
• Then integrated the interfaces & data stores
9 November 2013
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Ken Varnum
10. How Many Items Are We Talking
About?
All
Mirlyn
Role
Articles Database Journal Metalib
Search
Faculty
27123
15510
5955
3482
2065
111
Staff
28596
15669
9276
2544
1010
97
Students
33196
19717
10607
1909
938
25
1738
1482
206
45
1
4
Multiple
148681
62507
61036
19749
4575
814
Total
239334
114885
87080
27729
8589
1051
Friends
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11. Summary of All Use
• Number of unique users
• Unique users by role
– Faculty
– Student
– Staff
– Friend
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12. Items Saved per User
n = 29375
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13. Items Saved per Faculty User
n = 2421
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14. Items Saved per Student User
n = 4193
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15. Items Saved per Staff User
n = 2596
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16. Usage Compared to
Campus Population
U-M
Population
Favorite
Users
% of
Population
7,500
1,726
23.0%
Staff
36,500
2,596
7.1%
Students
54,500
4,193
7.7%
Faculty
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17. Usage by Campus Role
Role
Faculty
% of Campus
Population
% of Favorites
Usage
23.0%
30.5%
Staff
7.1%
32.1%
Students
7.7%
37.4%
Campus population figures from http://obp.umich.edu/root/facts-figures/
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18. 40 /60 Rule
• 40 percent of users have 1 item
• 60 percent have the rest
Role
% w/1 Favorite
% w/2+ Favorites
Faculty (n = 2421)
35%
65%
Staff (n = 2596)
31%
69%
Students (n = 4193) 32%
68%
All * (n = 29375)
61%
39%
* Includes users with multiple roles.
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19. Campus Role & Favorites Category
Mirlyn
Items
Faculty
~23%
Staff
~30%
Students
~8%
9 November 2013
Articles
Items
Database
Items
Journal
Items
30.5%
23.0%
43.9%
51.5%
30.8%
35.9%
32.1%
25.2%
38.7%
41.1%
24.1%
23.4%
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Ken Varnum
20. Course Tags
• Students and Faculty have one-click add
• 4888 items with course tags
Items with
Course Tags
Items Total
% CourseTagged Items
Faculty
337
2421
13.9%
Staff
563
2596
21.7%
Student
1428
4193
34.1%
Multiple
2560
20165
12.7%
All
4888
29375
16.6%
Role(s)
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21. Students’ Use of Course Tags
Items
w/Course
Tags
% of Items
w/Course
Tags
Category
% of
CourseTagged
Items
Total Items
Saved by
Students
Mirlyn
604
3.1%
45.8%
19717
ArticlesPlus
687
6.5%
52.1%
10607
6
0.3%
0.5%
1909
21
2.2%
1.6%
938
1318
4.0%
100.0%
33171
Databases
Journals
Total
9 November 2013
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Ken Varnum
22. Conclusions
• Course tag use underwhelming
– No obvious value to students
– Plan to build functionality around course tags
• Favorites use overall
– Feels to slanted to one-and-done users
– Data not sufficiently dense
– Need to combine with broader use analysis
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Ken Varnum
23. Acknowledgements
• Albert Bertram for data extraction
• Justin Joque for data analysis advice
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“My Shelf” was one of the few parts of Metalib that was broadly liked and appreciated. We needed to keep it alive, somehow, when we replaced Metalib with our homegrown Summon interfaceOriginal VuFind had a favorites tool we didn’t like, so we built our own on top of our social bookmarking tool (may it rest in peace)Summon didn’t have persistent favorites in the native interface; we built our own interface, and added favorites it to several year laters.Kept favorites in the functions of Metalib that we re-created (database finder, journal finder)Integrated because people don’t want to look in different places for their stuff. And some want to organize things.
Needed a quick replacement for MetalibExpediencyExplore the value
Walk through the screen, what’s where, how it works.
In the discussion in the following slides, going to focus on people with only one role. Also going to set aside “Metalib Search” items.Data are from item creation through 9/21/2013Data are tricky; we lost creation dates when we upgraded to Drupal 7 in January 2013. Before that, were 170580Mirlyn: 88838There are about 240,000 items (as of 9/21/2013)Roughly 100,000 migrated into unified favorites170,000 in system when we went to Drupal 765,000 added since 1/29/2013Articles: 73270Journals: 5820Databases: 1615Savedsearches: 1037
Everyone – including people with multiple roles (hard to tease multiple roles out of the data)
Includes librarians
Includes non-librarian library employees
Percentages in left refer to percent of Favorites users