Currently viewing the tag: "affiliation"
Hello hello everyone. It’s about that time again: time for the Affiliation Survey!
Twice a year, the Hirsh Health Sciences Library runs the Affiliation Survey, where we walk around and ask every one of our lovely patrons which program they are with (Dental, Medical, Sackler, etc). This is all we ask. We will not ask for your name or even which year you’re in! The numbers we collect are used in aggregate so we can get a snapshot of what the library usage is like. The graph you see above is the result of last year’s two Affiliation months, for instance.
Here’s how it goes: there are 7 days spread out over the whole month, randomly chosen to try and maximize the usefulness of the numbers (in other words, we’re trying not to get skewed by specific exam blocks too much). On those days, HHSL staff (you’ll probably recognize us!) will walk around 4 times over the course of the day to gather the totals of how many people from each school are in the library. There will be signs and posters up this month, so you’re not caught unaware.
Keep your eyes out for them!
We won’t announce ahead of time which days we’re counting (see our need to randomize, above), so it’s safe to assume that it could just happen any day this month.
Don’t panic!
If you don’t want to be bothered (or to speak out loud), you are welcome to leave your ID next to you while you study. If that is still not good enough, you can write your program down on a piece of paper and leave that next to you. If you’re in a group room, feel free to stick a note to the outside of the door (on the wood – the windows must remain clear!) telling us how many people of what program(s) are in the room. Done and done. We will add that number to our count, and we will move on to the next person!
There are pencils, pens, markers, scrap paper, and tape down at the Service Desk on the 4th floor, so you can even make your sign bright and cheerful! If you have any questions or concerns, let us know either in person at the desk, or through Ask Us on our website. We’re here to help and make this quick and easy.
But otherwise, we look forward to seeing you all this month and finding out just what our beloved HHSL looks like this fine autumn.
Good luck on studying and I look forward to seeing you in the library!
Tom
Hello hello everyone. It’s about that time again: time for the Affiliation Survey!
Twice a year, the Hirsh Health Sciences Library runs the Affiliation Survey, where we walk around and ask every one of our lovely patrons which program they are with (Dental, Medical, Sackler, etc). This is all we ask. We will not ask for your name or even which year you’re in! The numbers we collect are used in aggregate so we can get a snapshot of what the library usage is like. You can take a look at my post from July to see how the data turns out.
Here’s how it goes: there are 7 days spread out over the whole month, randomly chosen to try and maximize the usefulness of the numbers (in other words, we’re trying not to get skewed by specific exam blocks too much). On those days, HHSL staff (you’ll probably recognize us!) will walk around 4 times over the course of the day to gather the totals of how many people from each school are in the library. There will be signs and posters up this month, so you’re not caught unaware.
Keep your eyes out for them!
We won’t announce ahead of time which days we’re counting (see our need to randomize, above), so it’s safe to assume that it could just happen any day this month.
Don’t panic!
If you don’t want to be bothered (or to speak out loud), you are welcome to leave your ID next to you while you study. If that is still not good enough, you can write your program down on a piece of paper and leave that next to you. If you’re in a group room, feel free to stick a note to the outside of the door (on the wood – the windows must remain clear!) telling us how many people of what program(s) are in the room. Done and done. We will add that number to our count, and we will move on to the next person!
There are pencils, pens, markers, scrap paper, and tape down at the Service Desk on the 4th floor, so you can even make your sign bright and cheerful! If you have any questions or concerns, let us know either in person at the desk, or through Ask Us on our website. We’re here to help and make this quick and easy.
But otherwise, we look forward to seeing you all this month and finding out just what our beloved HHSL looks like this fine autumn.
Good luck on studying and I look forward to seeing you in the library!
Tom
Hi everybody! It’s been a little bit since my last statistics post (just about one year, in fact), so it seemed high time for me to do another one of these. Today I’ll be focusing on October 2016 and March 2017, which were our two Affiliation Months this year. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, that’s when the library staff go and ask every person in the library what their program is, so that we can have a general sense of how our space is being used.
Still with me? Good!
Click to see full size
This first chart is comparing the Affiliation Stats from October 2016 and March 2017. To gather this info, we chose 7 days out of each month (one Sunday, one Monday, etc. All were chosen randomly) and on those days went around 4 times a day. This is always an interesting comparison due to the different programs and the way they operate. Dental and Medical students were gearing up for board and class exams, so it’s no surprise that we would see so many extras in March. There was a jump in PA as well (new class means new exams!), but then we saw drops with Sackler, Friedman, MBS, and PHPD. So what happened there? It’s hard to say. Different timing on exams, different demands on the classes, all sorts of things can affect attendance in the library. Ultimately, March was still the busier month: we counted 3,327 people in March, but only counted 3,115 people back in October.
The thing to keep in mind is that these numbers are only a snapshot. To truly know what the individual program attendance in this library is like for a full month we would need to gather this data every single day for that entire month, and that is unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how much quiet you like) unrealistic for us. Do you know what is quite realistic, however? Collecting a month’s worth of circulation data!
Click to enlarge
Bam. That’s a full month of data right there! So what does this show us when compared to the Affiliation graph? Well for one, we can see that the space was occupied more than our things were being checked out to a point, which is actually pretty normal. People do like checking things out (skulls! laptops! books! phone chargers! oh my!), but the library keeps adding more and more space, making it easier to go and hide out and get your studying in.
But here are some thoughts: why are the numbers so similar? We never have had a 1-1 relationship between studying and circulation before, but parts of this are surprisingly close. What’s causing the numbers to fluctuate the way they do? Consider: we have exams in March and April, and Extended Hours at the end of March. Affiliation was overall higher (by 212 people), but Circulation was lower (by 249 checkouts). Weird, right?
There are many factors that affect all of these numbers, but I won’t be going into them in this post. There’s only so much space, and I still need to talk about the floors!
Click to embiggen
So. Dental students love the 7th floor. Surprise! Medical and MBS are also huge fans, so it looks like all of those new study carrels we added last summer really helped! Everybody else is spread rather evenly over the floors, although I do find it interesting that the PA students go up to 7 when they’re not in class (I guess to get away from the classrooms – can’t say I blame anyone). It’s good to see people like the furniture and spaces so much! Warms the heart (which is numbered and on a stand, and you can check out from the Library Service desk for 4 hours at a time. I’m not kidding).
The 7th floor has always been the most popular (generally about twice as popular as any of the other floors), and the breakdown after that is always fascinating. Medical students overwhelmingly prefer the 7th, followed by 6 – study quiet, which makes sense. Since the 4th and 5th floors offer some small group opportunities, those are split evenly. Dental may trend toward groups even more so than I used to think – perhaps that’s why there are so many up on 7, and then in decreasing order from 4, 5, and 6?
I would like to state that it is exciting to see Sackler, Friedman, PA, PHPD, and MBS showing up in larger and larger numbers. Hirsh Health Sciences Library is for everyone on the campus, and we want you all to feel welcome! That’s why we have so many study carrels, and the Collaboration Rooms, and craft days, and all the other things that make the days go round. And based on the posts from over the last few years, it seems like we’re only getting more and more popular, which is fantastic. Feel free to keep coming in bigger numbers, we have space for you all!
And on that uplifting note I will leave you for now. Perhaps I will be able to do a look at the full year’s numbers in a few months, so keep your eyes peeled. Until then: good luck with any exams you have left, and I’ll see you all around the library!
Tom
Hello hello everyone. It’s about that time again: time for the Affiliation Survey!
Twice a year, the Hirsh Health Sciences Library runs the Affiliation Survey, where we walk around and ask every one of our lovely patrons which program they are with (Dental, Medical, Sackler, etc). This is all we ask. We will not ask for your name or even which year you’re in! The numbers we collect are used in aggregate so we can get a snapshot of what the library usage is like. Go ahead, take a gander at my post full of graphs from last year. That should give you a good idea of what we do with this info!
This academic year we’ve done something different: scattered the days. We’re still collecting 7 days worth of data in October and March, but this time around those 7 days are spread out over the whole month, randomly chosen to try and maximize the usefulness of the numbers (in other words, we’re trying not to get skewed by specific exam blocks too much). Back in October you might have noticed that a few times there were big signs on the floors by the entryways and elevators warning you that we were collecting stats.
Well keep your eyes out for them!
We won’t announce ahead of time which days we’re counting (see our need to randomize, above), but we don’t want you to be completely off guard, either. If you come into Hirsh and you see one of those tall signs, please know that we will be coming around a few times that day to ask you which program you’re with.
Don’t panic!
If you don’t want to be bothered (or to speak out loud), you are welcome to leave your ID next to you while you study. If that is still not good enough, you can write your program down on a piece of paper and leave that next to you. If you’re in a group room, feel free to stick a note to the outside of the door (on the wood – the windows must remain clear!) telling us how many people of what program(s) are in the room. Done and done. We will add that number to our count, and we will move on to the next person!
There are pencils, pens, markers, scrap paper, and tape down at the Service Desk on the 4th floor, so you can even make your sign bright and cheerful! If you have any questions or concerns, let us know either in person at the desk, or through Ask Us on our website. We’re here to help and make this quick and easy.
But otherwise, we look forward to seeing you all this next month and finding out just what our beloved HHSL looks like this spring.
Good luck on studying and all of your exams and projects!
Tom
It is April of 2016, which means now is a great time to look at the Hirsh Library School Affiliation Survey from March and see how it compares to the one from October. Let’s get started!
First thing is first: PHPD has rocked up in numbers! Dental has traditionally been the most frequently counted school in this survey, but this is the first time that Medical has been dethroned as 2nd place. And look at the number differences: The difference from first to second place is 21 people, and the difference of second to third is 15. That’s ridiculous! We are very busy people here at HHSL.
“But Tom, what about Circ this time around? Does that match up to what we’re seeing here?” Oh, of course not. As you can see here:
Medical keeps their hold on the highest circulation of the week. However, what’s truly interesting is the strong showing of the PHPD programs and Nutrition. Look at those numbers! As someone whose whole job revolves around circulation at this library, it’s very exciting to see the growing interest in all programs across the board.
It is, generally, at this point that I go and show you something like a breakdown of the schools by floor. And therefore, I’m going to do that right now!
The 7th floor is, undoubtedly, the monarch of the floors. Look at that. Medical, Dental (by a massive margin) and Sackler/PHPD programs (by a smaller but still strong margin) all love themselves the 7th floor. I still find it interesting, though, that for Dental it’s 7th and then 5th, but for Medical it’s 7th and then 6th. A difference in study habits, perhaps – Dental students might be more interested in group rooms, whereas the Medical students are looking for singular study spaces (like small tables and study carrels). It would account for the 7th floor’s popularity with both, and then the difference in second favorite.
Nutrition seems to be much more interested in being able to talk – the openness of the 5th floor (and its collaboration rooms), followed by the room-heavy 7th.
And this is where we run into a limitation with the way we’ve been doing this survey: combining PA, PHPD, MBS, and Sackler all into one category. We know that the MBS program has been growing each year, and we know that the PA program has been growing. And PHPD encapsulates a number of other degree programs. Sadly, until now, I haven’t been able to distinguish between them when looking at this survey.
Going forward, however, I’ll be able to! We’re working on some back-end adjusting of how we collect all of this data, so that way we can be much more accurate across the board while going forward. After all, accuracy leads to knowledge, and knowledge is what we’re striving for here! I’m not sure anyone at HHSL was quite prepared for the way our numbers have exploded over the last couple years, so we’re playing a bit of catch-up in a few areas to make sure we can still serve the needs of our entire community!
But you’re probably wondering how March measures up against our October Affiliation count. It looks something like this:
It looks a lot like that! That’s surprising, kind of. Right? I mean, that is a lot of people. A. Lot. I find it interesting that Medical and Dental jumped so high (Boards and the infamous Dental Exam Block probably had a bit to do with that), but the PHPD programs dropped a little, and Nutrition bumped up slightly. Now what about the floors? How do those look?
They look busy is what they look like. Every single floor got busier! This, of course, comes as a surprise to absolutely nobody – it’s a well known fact that we’re busier in the spring than the fall (fun fact! Currently, October is the busiest month, followed by March, and February. April is traditionally the outright busiest of the year, however, so we’ll have to see how things turn out). But still, it’s kind of cool to see that each floor went up by just about the same proportion across the board. That’s ridiculous. That’s not supposed to happen in the real world! And yet, here we are.
Finally, we have the weekdays:
As you may have realized by now, I deal with a ton of statistics during the year. The red bars you see above most closely resemble the regular, month-by-month bell curve of how busy each day of the week is. The busiest day of the week might shift a bit between Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, but in general? It looks like that. Like a bell curve. But the blue! October did something unique, and dipped right in the middle of the week.
It’s worth noting: neither of these weeks had any major exams, and neither week had any holidays. They were chosen for both of those reasons. Perhaps that Wednesday in October was unseasonably nice, and everyone just really needed to be outside? Can’t say I blame them.
So there you have it! Our Affiliation Stats round-up. I’m already looking forward to doing some of the year-end numbers, and finding out just how crazy busy HHSL has been in the 2015-2016 academic year.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go look at something other than Excel for a few hours. Perhaps a few days.
Tom
It’s that time of the year again! From Sunday, March 6th through Saturday, March 12th, Hirsh Library will be running its Affiliation week survey. Huzzah!
What this means for you: 4 times a day (11 am, 3 pm, 6 pm, and 9 pm) a person will come around the library and ask what program you are with. You tell them (Med, Dental, Nutrition, etc), and they’ll move on to the next person. Easy peasy. But what if you don’t want to be interrupted?
Well that’s easy enough! You can leave your Tufts ID next to you, and we’ll just glance at that and move on. Or, if you’d rather not leave your ID out, you can just write your program on a piece of paper and leave that next to you.
If you’re with a group in a room and don’t want to be interrupted, you can tape a piece of paper to the outside of the door (but do not cover the glass) with the number of people and what program(s), such as “5 Dental” or “3 Sackler.”
Remember, this is only for the duration of above mentioned week, and then we’ll be done until next October. So it’ll be over before you know it!
If you have any questions or concerns, you can come talk to us at the desk on Sackler 4, or call 617-636-6706. We want this to go smoothly and quickly, and for you to be comfortable with it.
We look forward to seeing you next week!
Hello hello! It’s about that time again: I’m going to fill your life with statistics and numbers and hopefully a few interesting facts, and you can enjoy it in between panicking about that paper due tonight and that exam you have tomorrow. This post will be a perfect length for you to read and then hit the bathroom before your break time is up and you need to get back to work.
So. Let’s get started!
October was busy for us. Crazy busy, in fact. As you can see below, October was far and away the busiest month we had at the desk – we were just shy of 4300 checkouts! Egads. It was also the busiest month we had with our roaming statistics (which you’ve most likely seen – a staff member walking around with an iPad counting heads in the library). You may recognize these numbers as “not even close.”
“But what about the Affiliation Week?” you may ask. Well I’m glad you asked! The answer is kind of fascinating. So one thing that we strive for with this is to be as accurate as we can with what a “typical” week looks like here. As you can imagine, that is quite difficult, given the propensity of the schools to have full blocks of exams, staggered about the semester. We chose October 25th – 31st this year, since there were no exams that week, and therefore the numbers would be as least skewed as we could make them. Here’s what we saw.
The Dental School dominated the counted programs. This is probably not a surprise to anyone, since that’s been the trend. However, what is a surprise is the combined Sackler/PHPD (which includes PA and MBS). Their numbers have absolutely skyrocketed, and now even outpace the Medical school. That’s crazy! Unfortunately, the way the Affiliation data is collected, we don’t really know how much of that would be MBS students getting ready for MCATs, or PA hanging around and studying after (or in between) classes. But it’s still awesome to see!
If you break it down by floor, you’ll notice everybody loves the 7th floor, because of course they do! It’s great! Tons of individual study space, and plenty of group rooms. Dental looks like if they couldn’t take the 7th, they’d stay on the 4th, but everybody else started on the 7th and then trickled downward. Well…except for Friedman. Nutrition students like the 5th floor, it looks like – possibly big fans of the collaboration rooms?
Incidentally, this past November I actually went to a library conference down in Atlanta. I don’t know if you’ve been to Atlanta, but if you go, make sure to have some local beers (many good microbreweries down there), and go check out the Georgia Aquarium! The whale sharks are insane.
Sorry, got carried away there. The reason I mention this is that all of my work with stats here at Hirsh over the years led me to presenting a poster down at the conference! I talked with people from around the country about data collection and its uses. As it turns out, your very own Hirsh Health Sciences Library is at something of a leading edge with all of this! See, the entire philosophy behind finding all these numbers out is that we want to be able to serve all of you as best as we possibly can, and every piece of information helps with that mission. I don’t tend to get too technical with these posts, but we do know (for instance) that laptops, Mac chargers, and phone chargers are the most popular items to be checked out. Books have been slipping every year as the schools push toward digitization, and the library has to be able to stay on top of that.
Well, we’re not alone! Other libraries – all libraries, really – are trying to keep up with the changing face of their patron body, and they aren’t always getting the info they need from their patrons or schools before they actually need it. So they’re starting to turn to data collection – Circulation statistics, head counts, all that stuff – in an attempt to see trends as they’re starting. I was very popular at this conference, as it turned out.
And in case you doubt my story, here’s the proof:
That is me, looking a combination of tired and excited, standing next to my poster (which, I’d like to note, was visually designed by the delightful Katherine Morley, Admin Coordinator for Hirsh, and head of our PR committee – so the brains behind events like our monthly crafts). The graphs on there are actual data from the library – specifically, it’s Circulation, Roaming, and Affiliation data from July 2013 through October 2015. Two and a half years of numbers, and trends, and watching our library grow and expand. I won’t lie – I was feeling pretty proud of what we do here while I was talking to people.
In the nerdiest way possible, of course.
On that note, I will leave you be. Thank you for sticking with me on this post! I truly appreciate it. Now, go hit the bathroom, get yourself some caffeine delivery system of choice, and get back to studying! I have faith that you’ll do well, but fortune favors the prepared.
Good luck with the exams, and have a good break!
Until next time,
Tom
It’s that time of the year again! From Sunday, October 25th through Saturday, October 31st, Hirsh Library will be running its Affiliation week survey. Huzzah!
What this means for you: 4 times a day (11 am, 3 pm, 6 pm, and 9 pm) a person will come around the library and ask what program you are with. You tell them (Med, Dental, Nutrition, etc), and they’ll move on to the next person. Easy peasy. But what if you don’t want to be interrupted?
Well that’s easy enough! You can leave your Tufts ID next to you, and we’ll just glance at that and move on. Or, if you’d rather not leave your ID out, you can just write your program on a piece of paper and leave that next to you.
If you’re with a group in a room and don’t want to be interrupted, you can tape a piece of paper to the outside of the door (but do not cover the glass) with the number of people and what program(s), such as “5 Dental” or “3 Sackler.”
Remember, this is only for the duration of above mentioned week, and then we’ll be done until April. So it’ll be over before you know it!
If you have any questions or concerns, you can come talk to us at the desk on Sackler 4, or call 617-636-6706. We want this to go smoothly and quickly, and for you to be comfortable with it.
We look forward to seeing you next week!
Hello all! As you may recall, the Hirsh Library ran its biannual Affiliation Week survey back in March, which means the time has come for a blog post where I show you some of the numbers, so you can see how your school sized up against the others!
First up: how busy was the library? Well, the short answer is: crazy busy. March was overall just about one of the busiest months we’ve ever had (which is its own story for another day), and that was reflected pretty clearly in our data. For instance:, here’s how busy that week was (in terms of total people in the library):
Crazy, right? We had 793 people in the library on Wednesday, March 25th. It may not be the busiest day we’ve had, but that’s still busy! But really, we’re here to talk about the schools, so try this next chart on for size. It’s the total numbers of people from each school that were counted in Circulation (checking things out) vs Affiliation (when we walked around and asked where you were from):
So, ah…congrats, Dental! You blew everyone away in sheer numbers of people studying in the library. The circulation race was a bit closer, though: Dental was first with 372 checkouts, but Medical was a close second with 327, and Nutrition actually came in at third with 281. Of course, this is a good time to point out that it is not actually a contest between the programs – Hirsh is here to help everyone on our Health Sciences campus, whether they show up in huge numbers in these data sets, or whether we only see a few of their members all month. It is very helpful to know how we’re getting used, though, so here we are.
The final March chart is one of my personal favorites: the by-floor breakdown. This is where we can see how the members of the different programs spread out in the library. This is where you can see the most popular study spaces. To the surprise of absolutely nobody, it’s mainly the 7th floor:
What’s really interesting here is the way it got used, though. Yes, Dental used the heck out of the 7th floor, but once you remove that outlier what you see is…remarkably homogenous. Medical broke almost even between quiet floors on one side and “noisy” floors on the other. If they weren’t on the 7th floor, the Dental students could be almost anywhere else. Sackler students (which, for this survey, includes PA, PHPD, and MBS) were again preferring the 7th, but appeared willing to show up almost anywhere with equal interest. Nutrition preferred the 5th floor, though. Perhaps due to the sheer amount of group-appropriate space on that floor?
This brings us all to the Affiliation Year-In-Review part of this post. As I said, March was crazy busy. How busy, you might ask? Well, compared to October, we had more people in the library:
We checked out more books, laptops, and chargers (especially chargers):
We had more people around to tell us what programs they were from:
And each one of our floors was used more than it had been in October. This final chart suggests that all of the construction on the 6th floor has gone to good use (that’s a jump of 236 people right there – ultimately making the 6th floor busier than the 5th by 9 people), although no matter how many classrooms we build, people will always prefer the quiet of the 7th floor for work and studying:
Thank you for reading! Once all the numbers for this academic year are in this summer, I will be putting together a look back at this past year, which has been busier than we’ve ever been (and perhaps even busier than we were expecting to be). In the meantime, if you’d like a more in-depth discussion of any of the information presented (or if you’re just interested in chatting usage or data in general), feel free to come see me at the Service Desk on Sackler 4 some weeknight! I’m always happy to talk.
Especially after being driven half-blind by Excel’s chart system.
Tom
This past October, from the 19th to the 25th, we ran our semi-annual School Affiliation statistics again. This time around, we were able to keep it away from a major exam block, and we also grabbed the circulation data for that time to make sure we got the best picture of the week. Since it was shorter than last time, this post will be relatively quick. But hopefully you’ll still find it interesting!
First thing is first: how many people were in the library that week? Well, we counted a total of 3,230 people that week, 695 of which were here on Wednesday alone. You can see the breakdown below.
Now, what you’re probably really wondering is how that breaks down by school, right? The answer is rather interesting. Namely, it breaks down (by floor, even!) thus:
You may notice that everyone loves the 7th floor, and that the Dental school in particular loves the ever-loving-fillings out of it. It’s worth noting that they had some exams that week, which helps explains their numbers. But what’s interesting in that graph is that you can see what kind of exams they were – the kind that required solo study (notice that the quiet floors had the majority of them). In fact, this survey seems skewed toward quieter studying. I look forward to finding out what differences there are come Spring – does April encourage more group study than October? Or was it pure chance that these number shook out this way?
Of course, what’s most fascinating is when you compare the above graph with the circulation one below, and see the full picture:
It can be a little tricky to tell due to scale there, but Medical actually checked out the most that week, followed by Nutrition, and then Dental. It seems that the Dental students were really here for the studying, not the circulation. And the Medical students were most likely checking things out and then going back to the individual study rooms or learning commons – essentially showing up on one set of statistics but not the other. Although Nutrition really made the interesting difference – the circulation number is actually higher than what we counted!
This is why the middle and bottom graphs are uneven when compared to one another – people just simply move around. The library supplies space and materials, but they don’t always get used at the same time.
That wraps it up for this time. We could, of course, look at these numbers from a dozen different directions, but maybe we can save that for the next time. After all – it’s only November.
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