Knowing Where They Went: Six Years of Online Access Statistics via the Online Catalog for Federal Government Information

Christopher C. Brown is Associate Professor and Reference Technology Integration Librarian at the University of Denver, Penrose Library; e-mail: [email protected]. © Christopher C. Brown As federal government information is increasingly migrating to online formats, libraries are providing links to this content via URLs or persistent URLs (PURLs) in their online public access catalogs (OPACs). Clickthrough statistics that accumulated as users visited links to online content in the University of Denver’s library OPAC were gathered over a six-year period and were analyzed. Among the conclusions were that DU users prefer online content over print for both newer and older documents and that there is great benefit in adding URLs above and beyond the URLs supplied by GPO cataloging.