Understanding IPL Users and Services: 2009 Winter Overview

1. What do we know about IPL users and the services provided to them? Winter 2009

2. Overview • Information describing visitors of the IPL’s website • Research about the IPL’s question answering service: • Findings from two studies of the IPL’s email reference service- one in 1999, the other in 2007- will be highlighted. • Studies examined the service’s users, the types of questions posed to the service, and characteristics of the service’s question handling. • Sample questions and answers from three specific user communities: • Educational organizations • Community organizations • Non-profits

3. Geographic Distribution of IPL Visitors, 2005-2008

4. IPL Visitors by Country, 2005-2008 Source: Google Analytics

5. Email Reference Service, 1999 • Carter & Janes (2000) study analyzed reference interactions of the IPL’s question answering service from questions posed to the service in 1999. • Research conducted for an understanding about the service’s users, questions asked, and how those questions were handled by the service. • Examined 3,022 reference questions. • Questions received from January to March 1999 were included for the study.

6. Characteristics of the Service’s Users, 1999 • Twenty-four percent of users identified themselves as business persons, and fewer self-identified as teachers or librarians. (n=888) • Fifty-two percent of users selected the purpose of their question as school-related.(n= 1,073) • Users submitted their questions to the service in the following ways: • General Adult web form- 68% • Direct email- 26% • KidSpace web form- 4% • An IPL web form on the site intended for another purpose- 1.4%

7. Users’ Questions by Subject, 1999 • Users designated the subject of their question on the web forms. Questions unanswered by the service do not receive a subject code. • The most frequent subjects assigned by users include other, education, humanities, science, and government/law. • The subject category blank was assigned by researchers when questions were received through direct email.

8. Service Characteristics, 1999 • Approximately 25% of all received questions were rejected (unanswered). • Top three reasons for question rejection (n=700): 1. Quota (too many questions pending answers) – 53.4% 2. Rejected due to patron’s specified need-by date- 17.9% 3. Bad email address- 7.3% • Questions submitted via the KidSpace web form were most rejected: • Timeliness of response for answered questions (n= 2,322): • 2.10 days for factual questions; 2.31 days for sources questions • About 25% of questions answered within 1 day

9. Email Reference Service, 2007 • A follow-up to the Carter & Janes (2000) study was conducted using 2007 reference data to explore the IPL’s question answering service. • Analysis of reference interactions was undertaken by Rozaklis, MacDonald, & Abels (2008) for a poster session competition at Drexel Research Day. • Investigated the service’s users, the kinds of questions posed, and how those questions were handled by the service. • Examined 128 reference questions, a 1% stratified sample of the total number of questions received by the Ask an IPL Librarian service in 2007.

10. Characteristics of the Service’s Users, 2007 • Twenty-nine percent of users identified themselves as outside of the United States. Sixty-two percent identified their location inside the United States. (n=128) • Eighty-three percent of users submitted their questions through the General Adult web form. (n=128) • 49% of users’ questions posed via the General Adult web form indicated that they planned to use the response for a school assignment. • Users who reported consulting outside sources prior to contacting the IPL stated having referred to the following sources:

11. Users’ Questions by Subject, 2007 • Researchers analyzed all questions, both answered and rejected, to determine which subject codes users assign to their questions. (n=128) • The subjects users assigned to questions most frequently include history, other, science, and education. • Users and IPL Librarians agreed on subject codes assigned to questions 78% of the time.

12. Users’ Questions by Question Type, 2007 Users’ questions were classified following Schwartz’s (2003) schema.

13. Service Characteristics, 2007 • Of the 128 questions sampled for the study, 40% were rejected. • This figure is slightly higher than the rejection rate for all questions received in 2007, at 33%. • Roughly 50% of questions received through the KidSpace web form were rejected. • Fifty-percent of questions posed for work-related purposes were rejected. • Treatment of questions by how the user stated that they would use the response (n=128):

14. Specific User Groups of theAsk an IPL Librarian Service • Additional user communities identified include: • Educational organizations • Community organizations • Non-profits • Sample questions and answers from those specific user groups included in the remaining slides.

15. EducationalOrganizations(1)

16. Educational Organizations (2)

17. Community Organizations

18. Non-profit Organizations

19. Sources Consulted Carter, D.S., & Janes, J. (2000). Unobtrusive Analysis of Digital Reference Questions and Service at the Internet Public Library: An exploratory study. Library Trends, 49(2), 251-265. Schwartz, J. (2003). Toward a Typology of E-mail Reference Questions. Internet Reference Services Quarterly, 8(3), 1-15.