Answer: 76,998

Question: How many telephone calls did Central Librarians handle between July 1, 2007 and July 1, 2008?

It has been many years since we had the ability to accurately count calls to the Telephone Reference Desk. The new telephone system installed last spring has been counting for a year, now, and here's what we learned:
- Total talk time: 2,539.7 hours.
- Busiest month: January (7,542)
- Slowest month: November (5,349)
- Busiest time: 10-12 a.m.
- Slowest time: 7-8 p.m.
- Average wait to speak to a librarian: 1.5 minutes.
- (Red face, here) Longest wait in the hold queue: 28.5 minutes.

These were among the questions that crossed our desk recently:

Q. What are the health care benefits of federal public officials?

A. Slate reports that the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program is administered by the United States Office of Personnel Management. OPM reports it covers over 4 million federal employees, retirees and their families, and the government pays about 75% of the average premium. Benefits are listed on the Program's web site, and there is an interactive map to discover local coverage by state.

Q. What are the Postal Service rules/specifications for the format of business reply envelopes?

A. For this, we went straight to the horse's mouth. The United States Postal Service web site has a downloadable "Quick Service Guide 507a" that answered the question exactly.

What do YOU want to know? Call 916-264-2920 and we'll do our best to find the answer to your question.

Whither Newspapers?

This morning, I attended a breakfast/informational session sponsored by NewsBank, vendor of our online subscription to the Sacramento Bee and other California newspapers. Here are some interesting statistics from Ken Doctor, former journalist and managing editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, who spoke about the "Changing Face of Content":

• 56 - average age of those who read newspapers in print


• 60 - average age of those who watch broadcast TV news


• 40 - average age of those who primarily use newspapers' web sites


• Yahoo! News - #1 Internet news site

Some surprising factoids:

• Americans read the news about 62 minutes per day. This has not changed over the last five years; what has changed is that more Americans are reading the news online now.


• 50% of Americans get their news at the GYM (Google, Yahoo!, MSN) daily; 25% more than once a day.


• 10% of news content is now blogs.


• 60% of broadband video is news footage. Reuters and AP make 1,000 new videos per month!

His conclusions: news and blogs may become indistinguishable, as television news and newspapers post additional information - much of it surprisingly comprehensive - and news stories on their blogs, and then the blog posts are, in turn, republished in print. This then leads to a few questions that have still to be answered: What is the newspaper of record? Print? Online? Are reader comments included?

What do you think? How do you get your news fix?

a very cool government document

Does anyone out there know that the Economic Report of the President has useful information in it? Admittedly, I didn’t know until recently. As of late I’ve been dabbling in government documents, and I’m learning that there is a lot more to government information than endless statistics, propagandistic posters, and dry transcripts of senate session agendas. Take the above report, for example, the 2008 Economic Report of the President. Chapters include: Year in review and the years ahead; Credit and housing markets, Importance of health and health care, Tax policy, Nation’s infrastructure, and Searching for alternative energy solutions. If you follow the news even a little, you know that these are all pertinent, potent, well-covered, and often controversial topics. If you don’t, well, the first chapter is an excellent read to get up to cocktail-party speed. In need of statistics on income, employment, and production? This book has them from 1959 through 2007. (By the way, don’t forget to boost your grades by including statistics in those research papers you’re writing-- professors just love them.) Maybe you’re concerned about nuclear power or interested in the government’s official perspective on alternative energy sources. Regardless of which sides of theses issues you’re standing on, you’ll find useful information. What about universal health care? Be impressed at the strategic tip-toeing around this subject. Perhaps the most likable part of this government document is that it is readable (albeit with a fair share of jargon). The conclusions and summaries throughout are biased towards pro-growth policies (more is better, to put it simply), and remember that real bracket creep is more of a reality than say, homelessness, as far as this book is concerned. So, while you may need to seek other perspectives, which are probably covered in other government documents, this is nonetheless a positive, accurate and accessible reflection of our current economy.