Web Statistics Reveal Usefulness of SLA Site
Over the last year, the total hits to IRC web pages increased from an average of 10,000 a month to more than 15,000 per month. This is particularly encouraging in that it hopefully indicates that the Virtual IRC is becoming a more useful resource for our members. The Information Resources Center home page is always first in the list of most requested IRC web pages, which is no great surprise, but the next few pages in the list have also remained surprisingly constant. The Knowledge Management Electronic Information Packet (EIP) and the list of other Library Joblines EIP have remained the next two most requested pages. IRC staff put a lot of effort into updating and creating new EIPs so it is encouraging to see they are increasing in popularity. We have been concerned of late that the Knowledge Management EIP is far too large, but this fact does not appear to have affected its usefulness.
The consistent inclusion of the EIPs of Library Joblines, Government Joblines, and Miscellaneous Internet Job Resources in the top fifteen most requested pages shows the importance that our users give to finding a job, or perhaps they are looking for the going rate for an equivalent job to theirs. We included an EIP on Salary Surveys in late 1999 and this page consistently features in the top ten. Statistics have to be treated cautiously as they can be interpreted to prove almost anything. However our aim is to provide relevant and timely resources in the most user-friendly format, so it is comforting to see that a new EIP, such as the one on Portals is one of the most requested web pages prepared by the IRC.
Our monthly web statistics, prepared using Webtrends, present us with a mass of data in every which way. There are bar charts, pie charts, graphics, and tables in every conceivable color. They show Bandwidth by indicating the volume of activity as Kbytes transferred. We have breakdowns by city, state, countries, organizations, by days of the week, and by hours of the day. I wonder what I should read into the fact that over the last three months the web site has been accessed between 19:00 hours (7 p.m.) to 20:00 almost twice as often as during other hours, and that prior to April the hourly access between 09:00 and 20:00 was fairly equal. On a more serious note it is interesting to see the average time viewed for each page. This does not appear to bear any correlation to the popularity of the site. Users spend more time on average looking at the Opinions and Perceptions of the Library Profession and Starting and Managing a Special Library EIPs than the more popularly visited Portals EIP. The most time is spent on the IRC Information Request Form, which probably proves that a revision of the form is well overdue.
Statistics have certainly proved the importance of accessibility for CONSULT Online, SLA's directory of member consultants. The monthly web statistics for CONSULT Online show that hits of under forty in January were increased to an average of over 500 in the next four months after direct access was added to the SLA home page. Hopefully this will encourage the continued increase in the number of member profiles being added to the database, which now exceeds 220.
EIPs Go Members Only
On the revised SLA web site many member services have been added to the Members Only section. We have kept the purely reference type EIPs, such as lists of library related organizations or training organizations on the public access pages, but moved the value added resources of the EIPs on Careers, Intellectual Property, International Resources, Internet/Intranet, Knowledge Management, Management and Services, Marketing and Value, Technology and Libraries to behind the Members Only firewall. Thanks to LEXIS-NEXIS' continued sponsorship of the IRC we are now offering a Latest Industry News using their Tell Me More service. Comments on this new resource would be gratefully received at irc@sla.org. We are always striving to improve our information resources so please don't hesitate to contact us with your suggestions.
For more information, contact John Latham (john@sla.org).
Lexis-Nexis is the sole sponsor of the IRC 
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