> ## Content Index
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> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Library website analytics
- URL: https://www.lorcandempsey.net/library-website-analytics-2/
- Published: 2009-01-20T12:41:41.000Z
- Updated: 2020-10-28T09:18:11.000Z
- Author: Lorcan Dempsey
- Tags: Systems, UX

I have just been looking at the [presentation](https://conferences.infotoday.com/documents/52/C102%5FSheikh.ppt?ref=lorcandempsey.net) \[ppt\] given by Tony Hirst and Hassan Sheikh to [Internet Librarian International](https://www.internet-librarian.com/2008/day.php?day=Thursday&ref=lorcandempsey.net#session%5FC102) last October.  
They report the results of their analysis of traffic to the home page of the Open University Library using Google Analytics.  
Here are some of the things that I noticed:

- The most clicked links on the home page were: Databases (20%), eJournals (19%), Library Catalogue (11%).
- Slightly over half the traffic came directly to the website, about 40% from referring sites, and just over 5% from search engines.
- The most popular pages (aside from the home page) are Journals, Databases, and eResources (Online collections by subject).
- There is data on referrals to particular resources, by source website (e.g. from a learning management system) and by network location.
- The presentation concludes with some questions for further investigation, including thinking about slicing data by referring course (from within the learning management system) and by database.

A couple of things jumped out at me. First, I wondered whether the low number of clicks from the home page through to the catalogue as compared to licensed materials would be repeated in other institutions. And second, I was interested in the large number of referrals from other internal OU systems (e.g. the learning management system aka VLE). Again, I wondered whether this pattern was repeated in other university environments.  
For related work, see Tony Hirst’s blog entries beginning with [this one](https://ouseful.wordpress.com/2008/08/20/library-analytics-part-1/?ref=lorcandempsey.net).  
Update: Check out the [comments](https://blog.oclc.org/lorcand/archives/001858.html?ref=lorcandempsey.net#comments) for a note by Tony Hirst about ways in which the OU may not be typical. He also talks a little about measuring traffic from the VLE to the library.