Questions asked of Swinburne Library shelving staff across a three month period at the end of the academic year: September to November 2009

We know that library users often get lost looking for physical items, however there has been little research on how library users search the shelves or what causes them to fail to find what they are looking for. The researchers carried out a preliminary investigation into library users' difficulties searching the shelves. To get an initial picture of exactly what kind of problems library users face when searching for physical items, they asked shelving staff to collect the questions they were asked in a three month period at the end of the academic year (01 September to 17 November 2009). Shelving staff are highly visible in the library and available at the point of need when users get lost; this makes them ideally placed for contextual data collection about users' problems. To facilitate data collection the researchers provided data sheets that had spaces for campus, date, whether or not the user already had a Dewey decimal number and a free-text description of the user's problem or question. Participation in data collection was voluntary, so the queries collected are not a universal sample; however issues staff reported were fairly consistent, and thus are probably representative. Over the three months that this study ran, 183 enquiries, problems and questions were recorded by shelving staff; these enquiries were spread across the five main Swinburne campuses in Australia. 54% of the library users who consulted shelving staff in this study already had a Dewey decimal number. In the free-text enquiry field, some staff recorded problem or enquiry, some recorded assistance offered, and some recorded both. Provided here are a PDF copy of the data sheet used by shelvers for capturing information; and the results of the study. The results are presented in a single Excel spreadsheet with 41 rows and 183 columns of data. Rows categorise the data by the type of problem library users encountered. Columns indicate the campus and date of the question, and whether or not the user already had a Dewey decimal number for the item. End users will require Microsoft Excel or the equivalent to open the spreadsheet.

我们知道，图书馆用户在查找实体物品时常常迷失方向，但关于用户如何查找书架，或导致他们无法找到目标物品的原因，相关研究却寥寥无几。研究人员针对图书馆用户查找书架时遇到的困难开展了初步调查。为初步了解用户查找实体物品时具体面临何种问题，研究人员请排架人员收集学年末三个月（2009年9月1日至11月17日）期间被问到的问题。排架人员在图书馆中辨识度高，且能在用户迷失时及时提供帮助，因此是收集用户问题相关情境数据的理想人选。为便于数据收集，研究人员提供了数据表，其中包含校区、日期、用户是否已获取杜威十进制分类号（Dewey decimal number），以及用户问题的自由文本描述栏位。数据收集为自愿参与，因此所收集的查询并非全面样本；但工作人员报告的问题具有高度一致性，故可能具有代表性。在研究开展的三个月期间，排架人员共记录了183条咨询、问题及疑问；这些咨询分布于澳大利亚斯威本大学的五个主校区。本研究中咨询排架人员的用户中，54%已获取杜威十进制分类号。在自由文本咨询栏位中，部分工作人员记录了问题或咨询内容，部分记录了提供的帮助，还有部分两者皆有记录。此处提供排架人员用于信息采集的数据表PDF副本，以及本研究的结果。研究结果以单个Excel表格呈现，包含41行183列数据。行按用户遇到的问题类型对数据进行分类，列则显示问题对应的校区、日期，以及用户是否已获取目标物品的杜威十进制分类号。终端用户需使用Microsoft Excel或等效软件打开该表格。