1166 Statistics

About once a year for one week we'd have to track all our questions in the library. I'm not sure which black hole these are tossed into, but I think ours were repackaged and sent to ARL or maybe ACRL. They have categories like "ready reference," "directional," "telephone," "e-mail" and so forth. You'd get a huge sheet, one for each day and one for each staff person, and you'd make hash marks in the appropriate column as inquiries were made. Sometimes you'd get a trifecta or even a quadfecta with several questions chained together. "Hi, do you remember me?" (one slash mark). "Have you heard about the science fair my son wants to enter?" (two slash marks), etc. The cartoon "Overdue Media is running a series on reference stats. If you don't think it's funny, then you've probably never worked in a library.