In Spring 2015, librarians answered 4,932 reference questions.
The number of reference questions answered has dropped from Spring 2014 (8,260). Fewer librarians to staff the desk has impacted our ability to serve our students.
In previous semesters, desk substitutes would be assigned to cover a librarian's desk if they were scheduled to teach a library instruction class during their normal desk time. But with fewer librarians, we no longer have the luxury of assigning "desk subs." This means that during several peak reference shifts during the semester there was only one librarian available to assist students.
Tuesday was our overall busiest day. Monday was our 2nd busiest. Our busiest days/time (anything over 170) for Spring 2015:
Our patrons prefer to ask for help In person by a whopping 91%. Patrons contacting us through other means (phone calls, texting, email, and Ask a Librarian form) were only 9%.
Technical questions (database access, database searching, GoPrint) rose sharply from Fall 2014 (38%) and accounted for 47% of all questions.
Reference and Directional were steady from the previous two semesters at 31% and 21% respectively.
Now let's look at the type of question asked and how long it took us to answer each question:
