Document Type
Article
Department or Administrative Unit
Library
Publication Date
2018
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.
Recommended Citation
Olshausen, M. (2018). A Statistical Approach to Assessing Research Guide Use at Central Washington University. PNLA Quarterly, 82(3/4), 23-34. https://arc.lib.montana.edu/ojs/index.php/pnla/article/view/1338
Journal
PNLA Quarterly
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Rights
© 2018 by the author.
Comments
This article was originally published in PNLA Quarterly. The full-text article from the publisher can be found here.