To summarize – We were busy!

Archives and Special Collections has compiled our numbers for July of 2014 through June of 2015:

• 15,162 people were served in 2014/15 through 8,449 reference inquiries and 6,713 non-reference inquiries. Staff members spent 2,806.58  hours assisting these users.
• 2,024 people made appointments while there were 1,439 people walk ins. 12,212 contacted us by phone or email.
• 6,759 users were from outside the University of Minnesota compared to 5,204 U of M users. The affiliation of 2,695 is unknown.
• 322 classes were taught to 3,836 attendees totaling to 1,051.00 hours of instruction. The time to prepare for all that was 462.44 hours.
• 42,773 total items were retrieved to be used by researchers or processing activities. 1,197.39 hours was all it took to retrieve those items.
• 40,129 items were re-shelved taking 1,116.14 hours.
• 6,633.55 hours in total were spent answering reference/non-reference inquires, retrieving items, re-shelving items, teaching classes, or preparing to teach a class.

These numbers are similar to those reported the previous fiscal year. 

We also ask users to give us feedback on their experience at Andersen Library. Last year we had thousands of users but only thirteen left comments after their visit.  We asked them to rate the staff with 1 being excellent and 5 being poor. We received 12 ratings of “excellent” and one rating of “poor” giving us an average rating was 1.4. Among the comments researchers wrote:

“Great place to research.”

“Thanks so much it’s been a joy!”

“Thanks for maintaining this excellent archive!”

“Thank you for the good research experience.”

“You make my research easy!!”

“Excellent job by all.”

The staff at Archives and Special Collections takes great pride in the service we offer to researchers. We have already served hundreds more researchers during the new fiscal year and we hope to have more satisfied visitors in the months ahead.