My Old LibTech Blog (2013-2016)

Sometimes it's good to be wrong. I had a small experience of that sort quite recently, when I had a look at the usage stats for a feature we added into the catalogue that lets people text call numbers to themselves. SMS has been a fairly standard feature in newer library catalogues for a while now, but ours isn't one of the newer ones and our vendor hasn't got around to adding it in. So we built it in house.

I have to confess to a degree of doubt when we undertook the project. Not doubt as to whether it would be feasible, but doubt as to whether it would be used. It's not unheard-of for features to be introduced for which there is no real demand, like when a whole bunch of libraries (not us though) implemented 'user reviews' functionality in their catalogues, a la Amazon.

As it turns out, my doubts were misplaced. The results are in, and SMS is the winner. Usage varies throughout the year, but as the stats below indicate, it's  a popular feature. These aren't stats that would make Google sit up and take notice, but our user base is a lot smaller than theirs. Over 5000 SMS messages in March 2013 equals one fifth of the total items signed out of the Library that month. Here's the breakdown over the past year:



2013.11  5431

2013.10  4783

2013.09  3291

2013.08  1418

2013.07  1958

2013.06  1691

2013.05  1574

2013.04  2418

2013.03  5077

2013.02  3724

2013.01  3269

2012.12  1447

That's a lot of call numbers that weren't written down on little paper slips. And some of them were mine. I have to confess that SMS is now my number-one preferred method of getting call numbers to myself. In addition to the convenience of not having to locate a golf pencil, there's the added bonus that a record of call numbers is kept on my phone, so I can refer back to them later if I need to.

So, mea culpa, I was wrong. Perhaps I'll remember to check my skepticism at the door next time.