In Fall 2014, librarians answered 8,522 reference questions.
The number of reference questions answered has dropped from Fall 2013 (11,259). 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.
Monday was our overall busiest day. Tuesday was our 2nd busiest. Our busiest days/time (anything over 300) for Fall 2014:
Our patrons prefer to ask for help In person by a whopping 90%. Patrons contacting us through other means (phone calls, texting, email, and Ask a Librarian form) were only 10%.
Technical questions (database access, database searching, GoPrint) were down from previous semesters and accounted for 38% of all questions.
Reference went up from the previous two semesters (33%) and Directional was steady (28%).
Now let's look at the type of question asked and how long it took us to answer each question:
