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.

众所周知，图书馆用户在寻找实体物品时往往感到迷茫，然而，关于图书馆用户如何搜索书架或是什么原因导致他们无法找到所需物品的研究却寥寥无几。研究者对图书馆用户在搜索书架时的困难进行了初步调查。为了对图书馆用户在寻找实体物品时面临的特定问题有一个初步的了解，他们要求书架管理员在学年结束后的三个月内（2009年9月1日至11月17日）收集用户提出的问题。书架管理员在图书馆中具有高度的可见性，当用户迷失方向时，他们能够及时提供帮助；这使得他们成为收集关于用户问题的情境数据的理想人选。为了便利数据收集，研究者提供了包含校园、日期、用户是否已有杜威十进制编号以及用户问题的自由文本描述等信息的表格。数据收集是自愿参与的，因此收集到的查询并非普遍样本；然而，工作人员报告的问题相当一致，因此可能具有代表性。在研究进行的三个月内，书架管理员记录了183次询问、问题和困难；这些问题遍布澳大利亚斯旺伯恩大学的五个主要校区。在本研究中，54%向书架管理员咨询的图书馆用户已经拥有杜威十进制编号。在自由文本查询字段中，一些工作人员记录了问题或询问，一些记录了提供的帮助，还有一些两者都记录。此处提供的是用于捕捉信息的表格的PDF副本以及研究的结果。结果以一个包含41行和183列数据的Excel电子表格呈现。行根据图书馆用户遇到的问题类型进行分类。列表示问题的校园和日期，以及用户是否已经有了该物品的杜威十进制编号。最终用户需要Microsoft Excel或其等效软件来打开电子表格。