I finished compiling a summary of our 2007-08 statistics, and we came in at 20,533 chat and 1,075 e-mail questions for the year, our busiest yet.

This is a 5% growth in our chat and e-mail traffic over the 2006-07 year. This is great! The only thing is, we were really expecting a 10% growth.

I'm excited for the new software tools and collaboration we'll be using in September, and we've been busy enough as it is, so I'm not at all worried - our service is getting better and better.

Still, maybe you want to know why we aren't continuing on our path of ridiculous unsustainable growth?

Well, we didn't do the marketing we had planned. Instead, we set aside our marketing budget for software development. Besides, part of the plan this year was to take advantage of discounted unsold prime-time television and radio ad space from the Oregon Association of Broadcasters, and after talking to them this spring, there might not be a lot of that to go around until after November's election.

I also feel strongly that any marketing we do this summer and in the fall has got to reach out to K-12 users and send the right messages - which in my mind right now are that there are only a few of us online, we save you time, it's fun, and we'll help you when you are stuck. But we have to talk to some teens before we decide how to do that.

Last, our Find tool is providing patrons with a first-stop, self-service option for getting research help from us. About 600 people have been using it each month since October. I honestly feel that if we're going to try to reach everyone in Oregon, that self-service tools are going to be the way to do it.

For more statistics, see our goals and objectives page for 2007-08 and our monthly statistics page. I also created a PDF (see below) detailing usage by academic library patrons.