# Presentation: 719089

## Local Access Statistics for Federal Documents: Tracking Web Page and Online Catalog Usage

- Federal Depository Library Conference
- Washington, DC
- Wednesday, October 20, 2004
- Chris Brown
- University of Denver
- cbrown@du.edu
- Susan Xue
- University of Colorado at Boulder
- susan.xue@colroado.edu

## Statistics for Online Government Document Access through the OPAC : One Year of Statistics

- Federal Depository Library Conference
- Washington, DC
- Chris Brown
- University of Denver
- cbrown@du.edu

## The Challenge

## The Challenge: Domains

- Distribution of URLs: .gov, etc.

## The Challenge: Number of Servers

- GPO counted 1,416 unique servers: http://ww1.access.gpo.gov/gpoaccess/fdlp/tools/domains.html
- University of Denver counted 1,398 in local OPAC
- Challenge: tracking URLs for over 1,400 unique server domains

## Aggressive URL Adding

- Making of America
- Century of Lawmaking
- NASA Technical Reports
- NASA ICASE Reports
- URLs for older documents in GPO Access but not in GPO catalog records
- ERIC Digests
- Historical Publications of the United States Commission on Civil Rights (U. Maryland Law)

## Aggressive AddingWorth it?

- Was all this aggressive URL adding worth the effort?
- Needed a way to measure the results

## University of Denver Profile

- 70% selective depository
- Depository since 1909
- 80,187 URLs for govdocs, contained in 55,508 bibliographic records

## URLs in DU’s OPAC

## The Process

## Tracking System

- http://library.du.edu/findit/peak/redirect.cfm?LinkURL=
- We know every time a user access a government document through our OPAC.
- More on this in last year’s presentation.
- Last year’s presentation is available at:
- _[http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/pubs/proceedings/03prot.html](http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/pubs/proceedings/03prot.html)_

## How it works

## ColdFusion database keeps track of click-throughs

## Access database enhances data

## URL Management

- The new system has changed our updating process
- Reactive, rather than proactive
- URLs usually fixed within one day

## Results After One Year

## Results by Agency

## Results by Agency, cont.

## Top Agencies

| Congressional Hearings/Prints (Y 4) | 523 |
| --- | --- |
| Congressional Reports/Documents (Y 1) | 409 |
| Justice Dept. (J) | 333 |
| General Accounting Office (GA) | 308 |
| Defense Dept. (D) | 288 |
| Heath and Human Services (HE) | 250 |
| Commerce Dept. (includes Census) (C) | 227 |
| National Archives (AE) | 195 |
| Education Dept. (ED) | 177 |
| Congressional Commissions (Y 3) | 147 |
| Executive Office of the President (PREX) | 116 |
| Interior Dept. (I) | 89 |
| State Dept. (S) | 68 |
| Agriculture Dept. (A) | 63 |
| National Academy of Sciences (NA) | 62 |
| Environmental Protection Agency (EP) | 46 |
| Library of Congress (LC) | 39 |

## Top Titles

## Click-throughs by Date

- These results tell us that users will access older documents if they are available online: Evidence that the GPO digitization of legacy docs will be well-worth the effort.

## Circs vs. Online Access

- Most online accesses predictably follow circs; others do not – because of circ restrictions (ex.: AE) or mf formats (ex: GA).

## Benefits

- Informs book purchases
- More accurate item selection
- Retro cataloging can follow clickthroughs
- Selective URL maintenance: saves time
- Value of aggressing adding projects

## Aggressive adding Worth it?: YES

*Fully 39% of all clicks involved URLs added not by the GPO, but by our documents staff.*

## These Results Forthcoming:

*Online Information Review*, November, 2004

## Access to Government Documents: Tracking a Library’s Website

- Federal Depository Library Conference
- Washington, DC
- Susan Xue
- University of Colorado at Boulder
- susan.xue@colroado.edu

## Tools of evaluating access to government documents

- Number of circulation
- Number of reference questions
- Number of times of viewing electronic titles in local online catalog
- Remote access to federal documents through depository libraries (GPOAccess)
- Number of visits to website

## Why need a website?

- Currently 65% of GPO cataloged publications are online, 95% online in five years
- About 40% of these publications are links to agency websites (Judy Russell, 2003)
- There are many other publications on agency websites. A website could facilitate access to this huge volume of information
- Electronic government publications occupy more than 85% of the “deep web”, search engines cannot reach

- Government Publications Library, University of Colorado at Boulder
- _[http://ucblibraries.colorado.edu/govpubs/index.htm](http://ucblibraries.colorado.edu/govpubs/index.htm)_

## What web statistics tell us (how many, where, and visited what)

- Number of visits
- Length of visits
- Top pages visited
- Visitors and demographics
- How do people find our site (search engines)
- What search terms lead people to our site
- What browsers are used
- Most downloaded files

## Profile of visits

- 07/01/03-06/30/04
- Hits (successful): 891,188
- Visits: 424,820
- Average visits per day: 1,160
- Average visit length: 00:11:22
- Visitors who visited once: 195,909
- Visitors who visited more than once: 28,761

## Top pages visited

**Pages ****	****	****	****	****	****Visits  ****	****Avg. Time Viewed **
-  1 Homepage 				51,819 		00:07:58
-  2 Federal government index page	48,019  	00:01:19
-  3 Affirmative Action and Civil Rights 	39,968  	00:03:54
-  4 Guides to Public Records 		26,061  	00:04:30
-  5 Black history 				25,687  	00:04:24
-  6 Native American Treaties and Information 25,560  	00:03:54
-  7 United States Maps and Atlases 	17,371  	00:02:33
-  8 Demographics and Statistics 		15,408  	00:03:27
-  9 Colorado State Resources 		14,172  	00:01:46
-  10 Aerial Photography and Satellite Imagery 11,165  	00:03:40
-       (foreign countries)

## Most downloaded files

- 	**File ****	****	****	****	****No. of Downloads**
-  1 Europe from A-Z –guide to Europe		1,559
-  2 The ABC of Community Law			1,381
-  3 Questions of Jurisdiction			1,024
-  4 Government Publications Overview	510
-  5 Guide to use of Netscape Browser		507
-  6 A guide to environmental studies sources  476
-  7 A guide to League of Nation documents	189

## Most active cities

-  	**City****	****	****	****	****Visits**
-  1. Boulder, Colorado		43,713
-  2 Santa Clara, California	20,644
-  3 Chantilly, Virginia	 	14,908
-  4 Denver, Colorado		11,898
-  5 Atlanta, Georgia		7,993
-  6 Chicago, Illinois			7,183
-  7 San Mateo, California		6,668
-  8 New York, New York		6,415
-  9 Washington, D.C.		5,658
-  10 San Jose, California		5,527

## Most active countries

-  **Country****	****	****	****Visits**
-  1.United States 		370,774
-  2 Canada 			10,065
-  3 United Kingdom 	8,532
-  4 Australia 			3,162
-  5 Germany 			2,269
-  6 France 			1,961
-  7 Netherlands 		1,813
-  8 China 			1,808
-  9 Japan 			1,449
-  10 India 			1,440

## Top referring sites

- 	**Site ****	****	****	****	****	****Visits    **
-  1 No Referrer 				132,733   **31%**
-  2 http://www.google.com 		114,784   **27%**
-  3 http://search.yahoo.com 		47,152     **11%**
-  4 http://search.msn.com 		31,043       **7%**
-  5 http:// www-libraries.colorado.edu 	16,222       **4%**
-  6 http://aolsearch.aol.com 		6,008
-  7 http://web.ask.com 			5,531
-  8 http://www.google.ca 			4,857
-  9 http://www.doi.gov	 		3,998
-  10 http://search.colorado.edu 		2,446

## Top search phrases leading people to our site

**Phrases ****	****	****	****	****Phrases found % of Total**
-  1 affirmative action 			17,056 	7.22%
-  2 united states government 		4,227 		1.79%
-  3 colorado public records		3,618 		1.53%
-  4 alcohol statistics 			2,374 		1.00%
-  5 citizenship test 			2,359 		0.99%
-  6 black history month 		1,794 		0.75%
-  7 government acronyms 		1,764 		0.74%
-  8 public records 			1,750 		0.74%
-  9 united states map 			1,525 		0.64%
-  10 native american treaties 		1,474 		0.62%

## ...Top search phrases

-  11 satellite photos 				1,240 0.52%
-  12 navy acronyms 				1,018 0.43%
-  13 international organizations 		1,006 0.42%
-  14 congressional research service 	981 	0.41%
-  15 united states goverment 		898 	0.38%
-  16 united states maps 			861 	0.36%
-  17 black history 				807 	0.34%
-  18 affirmative actions 			750 	0.31%
-  19 affirmative action  			730 	0.30%
-  20 "affirmative action" 			716 	0.30%

## A useful information delivery tool

- Web visits VS traditional access
- 			**No of circ.****	****No of reference****	****No of visits**
- 	2001/02	19,681		8,320
- 	2002/03	17,698		8,892		310,554
- 	2003/04	13,107		6,422		424,820
- People seem find information useful as average visit time was 11 minutes
- The website attracts visitors nationwide, especially people referred by search engines. 15% of visits were from Colorado, 87% were from the U.S., and 13% international.

## Top pages visited and top search phrases

- Top pages/search phrases are not always the ones we expected
- Possible explanations:
- 	- most web surfers only go through first two search result pages
- 	- too many websites on legislation and statistics...
- 	- too few websites on affirmative action, public records...
- Possible developments
- 	- make links to legislation/statistics pages more visible
- 	- develop the most accessed subject pages into more comprehensive resources

## Develop more guides /instructions to resources

- Most downloaded files indicate that guides and instruction materials are popular
- Review and update existing documents
- Develop new guides/instructions
- Put a link to guides on the homepage

## Role of search engines

- 64% of total visits were referred by search engines
- Google (61% of referral) search technology – page rank + keywords
- Other search engines – keywords + domain name + other

## Impact of search engine technology on homepage design

- Homepage, as a likely recipient of high page rank, should be constructed accurately and informatively
- The most important links should be put on the first pages
- The architecture of the site should be shallow and consistent (Yahoo homepage is a model)
- (Thelwall, 2002)

## Government Publications Library Website (August 2002) 

## Government Publications Library Website (October 2003) 

## Before and after the redesign (Oct. 2003)

- Total visits 		Average per day	Visits to homepage
- 2002/03	310,554	848		73,922
- 2003/04	424,820	1,160		110,793

## A continuing task

- Monitor digitization projects by GPO
- Monitor digitization projects by agencies
- Monitor the development of technology
- Get to know publications on agency websites

## Interested in reading more on website evaluation?

- Online Information Review
- Volume 28 Number 3, 2004
- - Focusing on website evaluation, retrieval of online database, and search engines