Are Transaction Logs Useful? A Ten-Year Study

Authors

Julie Banks, Southeast Missouri State University

Date of this Version

2-2000

Document Type

Article

Citation

Journal of Southern Academic and Special Librarianship (February 2000) 1(3). ISSN: 1525-321X. Also available at http://southernlibrarianship.icaap.org/content/v01n03/banks_j01.html.

Comments

Copyright 2000, the author. Used by permission.

Abstract

Introduction

Transaction log analysis has long been a staple in academic libraries. Recently, for example, authors have reported on transaction logs and their use in identifying access point use, re-engineering the online public access catalog (OPAC), improving search retrieval, utilizing flip charts at terminals, and employing log data for general personnel management. There are still questions left unanswered, however, about the usefulness of transaction log analysis in marshalling personnel resources. One is whether the logs have predictive value over a span of time, and another is whether any useful trends can be discerned from the logs' data. To answer these questions, transaction log totals, i.e., author, title, subject, keyword, and total searches, were collected spring and fall 1998 and spring 1999 semesters for statistical analysis. The researcher contrasted and correlated this data generated at Southeast Missouri State University (SEMO), a mid-sized, regional university with an enrollment of 8,869 undergraduate and graduate students, with comparable data collected ten years ago at SEMO and with data reported by Neal Kaske at the University of Alabama.