Because I am part of the Reference/Instruction department, govt docs usage statistics are kept on the same stat sheet as daily reference transactions. "US Doc Questions" is just an additional column and I have provided the reference librarians with a definition of what counts as "using or providing help in US Docs." (Because our EU depository is interfiled with the circulating collection, we do not keep statistics for that collection.)

The librarians are asked to add a mark to the stat sheet for the appropriate general category (Directional, Reference, E-mail) as well as US Doc Questions each time they do one of the following:

1)Help a patron find a US Doc in the stacks

2)Help a patron find a US Doc in the catalog

3)Recommend, or assist a patron in the use of:
-Any US government agency web site
-Congressional Sources or Serial Set
-GPO Access or GPO Catalog of Government Publications
-Stat-USA, USA Trade Online, or American FactFinder
-Child Welfare Information Gateway, PubMed Central
-NOAA National Climatic Data Center, Environmental Health Information Service, AGRICOLA, DOE Information Bridge, DARTS, CRISP or NTRS

4)Answer a question with, or recommend using, any of the following titles (including their electronic versions):
-US Code, Statutes at Large, or US Reports
-Occupational Outlook Handbook or Dictionary of Occupational Titles
-Statistical Abstract of the United States
-US Government Manual
-Digest of Education Statistics or Condition of Education
-Crime in the United States or the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics
-Health and Vital Statistics volumes

Category 3, as is probably obvious, are all the online federal materials. Category 4 are the US docs that are classified in LC and shelved in the Reference Collection, or those that are in classified in SuDoc but kept in the ready reference collection at the desk.

We've been using this method for 3 years and it seems to work. I have to send a reminder about it every semester, but the list of categories is also on the department drive in our file of reference desk guidelines if someone needs to consult it.

I will gather up some stats for you but they are not that precise because we just started circulating our gov docs a year or so ago...a few months after I took over the dept. ;-) I know our electronic use stats are higher than the print. We use the LOUIS URL tracker in Workflows for that. Our systems admin. runs a report from Workflows.

You know, this fall we will be facing the biennial survey which usually asks about usage. I am collecting stats on usage in an average week, and that includes how many docs get put away after being used by the public.

I should also be able to compare check-outs this year to last year. Crunch some numbers....

Rob

I'm not sure if our stats would show an increase or not, but I'm pretty sure there hasn't been a decrease. I'll be glad to see if I can get the circulation stats and our admittedly sketchy re-shelving stats for you. We are in the midst of trying to get all our docs in the catalog and I'm sure having them cataloged would account for any increase we might show. This would be a variable you'd need to be sure to account for.

That's a great idea Stephanie. I wonder if other libraries are seeing an increase. We are not but we expect this to change now that we are cataloging all our documents housed in storage. This represents one third of our collection. We purposefully selected little used material for storage so if there is a sudden increase in use, it will definitely validate our efforts.

Jan