Determining Gate Count Reliability in a Library Setting

Abstract

2016 Phillips. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons-AttributionNoncommercial-Share Alike License 4.0 International (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly attributed, not used for commercial purposes, and, if transformed, the resulting work is redistributed under the same or similar license to this one. AbstractObjective -Patron counts are a common form of measurement for library assessment. To develop accurate library statistics, it is necessary to determine any differences between various counting devices. A yearlong comparison between card reader turnstiles and laser gate counters in a university library sought to offer a standard percentage of variance and provide suggestions to increase the precision of counts.Methods -The collection of library exit counts identified the differences between turnstile and laser gate counter data. Statistical software helped to eliminate any inaccuracies in the collection of turnstile data, allowing this data set to be the base for comparison. Collection intervals were randomly determined and demonstrated periods of slow, average, and heavy traffic.Results -After analyzing 1,039,766 patron visits throughout a year, the final totals only showed a difference of .43% (.0043) between the two devices. The majority of collection periods did not exceed a difference of 3% between the counting instruments.

An Analysis of the Effect of Saturday Home Football Games on Physical Use of University Libraries

“…Among the statistics documenting physical use of the library, gate counts, defined as "the total number of persons physically entering the library in a typical week" (National Center for Education Statistics, 2017, p. 3), are the sole statistic that provide information on overall building use. Gate counters are common across academic libraries, collecting hourly tallies of the number of people entering the library throughout the day with relatively high reliability (Phillips, 2016). Although some libraries employ card swipe systems for some or all of their opening hours in order to limit entry to campus affiliates and to collect select demographic data on the patrons entering their doors, the statistic reported to outside stakeholders is nonetheless a simple tally of the number of physical entries.…”