A Statistical Approach to Assessing Research Guide Use at Central Washington University

Authors

  • Mattias Olshausen Central Washington University

Keywords:

assessment, research guides, web pages, statistics, subject guides

Abstract

Much of the existing literature on library research guides, specifically those created using the ubiquitous LibGuides platform, expresses doubt that guides of a subject or topical variety are being used by students to an extent that justifies their creation and maintenance. Guides designed to be used in the context of particular courses are held to be more worthwhile, as they tend to experience more site traffic. This wisdom is tested using data generated by LibGuides’ internal Statistics tool for the Central Washington University library guides in the 2017 calendar year. The metric of asset clicks to page views is used as a rough means of measuring how much guides are used for research purposes. Course guides are scrutinized by comparing site traffic with instructional data, thus gaining an impression of how much students use those guides outside the classroom.

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Published

2018-11-19

Issue

Vol. 82 No. 3/4 (2018): Crossing Borders

Section

Peer-reviewed Articles

License

PNLA Quarterly is an open access journal. In that spirit, PQ authors retain the copyright to their works. PQ facilitates the distribution of its authors’ intellectual property in a professional manner to enhance the process of scholarly communication, and to advance the sharing of information in and beyond the library profession and the PNLA region. All works are licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 license.