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nameOverview
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Overview

How are patrons using your library? Did your recent Magic Tree House activity increase interest in that series? Are more patrons checking Bulletins now? All of these questions and more can be answered by two statistics tools!

With the information you get from Alexandria's Researcher statistics, you could:

  • Plan activities around trending topics, books, or authors.
  • Make sure you have items in your collection that fit current needs and interests.
  • See if your actions to promote your library caused an increase in usage.
  • Compare usage between various months (e.g. September vs. October).

Panel

Researcher Queries export

See all of your patrons' search terms for the past 30 days.

Panel

Researcher Monthly Usage report

See usage for various parts of Researcher over time.

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nameResearcher Queries
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Researcher Queries Export

Use this export to see the terms your patrons have searched (in Search and Scout) in the last 30 days. Running this export will generate a .txt tab-delimited file, which can then be imported into a spreadsheet for analysis.

Tip

Alexandria only keeps this data for 30 days, so we recommend setting up a saved export that runs once a month. Then you'll never have to worry about data expiring!

Preference

In order for Alexandria to begin recording search terms, you need to turn on the Preferences > Researcher > Log search queries preference. Note that Alexandria will only record this data from the time you update to 20.12 and turn on this preference onward.

Text File

The .txt tab-delimited file can be imported into a spreadsheet program for easier analysis. So, what exactly does Alexandria record?

DateInterfaceSite Code*Search Type + Term(s)AdditionalOverflow

# of Results

05/03/2021searchAMSsmart::catsauthor::carle - genre::Fiction - site::KNOCOPY - sitersn::3 - hidetitle::0NONE23
05/07/2021searchAMSauthor::riordanpubyear::1999–2001 - medium::book - studyprogramnamecode::4 - studyreadinglevel::a--f, A–Fsite::KNOCOPY - sitersn::2 - hidetitle::05
05/13/2021scoutJESsmart::"Percy*", "Jackson*"site::KNOCOPY - hidetitle::0NONE15

*If a patron searches by All Sites, the Union Site code will show.

Note that # of Results will be capped by what you have set in your Initial Search Results Returned preference.


Note
titleAdditional Column

The Additional column includes study program, medium, genres, and additional search types and terms (from Advanced Search) if they were used. There are a few other indicators you may notice:

  • site::KNOCOPY. This means electronic items that have no copies were included. In other words, items that belong to the entire catalog rather than a specific site.
  • sitersn::3. The sitersn is the location of a site within the database.
  • hidetitle::0. This indicates whether the patron searched for hidden items. A 0 means no, and a 1 means yes.
  • studyprogramnamecode::1. This tells you which study program was selected. Each study program is assigned a number:
    • 1 = Accelerated Reader
    • 2 = Reading Counts
    • 3 = Fountas and Pinnell
    • 4 = Guided Reading
    • 5 = Lexile

If there's a lot of information in the Additional column, it spills over into the Overflow column.

Analysis

Here are some things you can do in your spreadsheet to get useful information:

  • Sort by the term to see similar terms. Then you can get an idea of what's trending.
  • Use spreadsheet features like “count” functions to make graphs for similar terms, or terms on a specific topic you’ve been promoting.
  • Split columns to separate the search type with the terms.
  • Sort by result # and see what’s happening that results in 0 items found. Maybe you need to add some more subjects and misspellings to the record, or add more books to your collection!
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nameResearcher Monthly Usage
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Researcher Monthly Usage Report

This report will show you statistics on Researcher accessions and queries over time.

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