Date: May 30
Time: 9am-5pm
Hours: 8
Total Hours: 18
Today, I spent a full 8 hours at Perry. My morning of entering surveys began slowly, as SurveyMonkey’s website was down for around an hour. During this time, I found free stock images of libraries to be used in the redesign of Perry’s website. I also finished the observation study tally sheet. This will be used to track how and when patrons are using the library. Data will be recorded on an hourly basis for a two week period from June 12 to June 24. Beth hopes to repeat this study in the fall, as data from the summer may not be accurate during the rest of the year.
I researched and began the process of creating a map of Perry Public Library patrons. In a service area of just over 9,000 people, there are a surprising 6,000+ card holders. However, many of these cardholders do not live in the immediate area. Beth provided me with an Excel spreadsheet of all the cardholders’ addresses. She had previously tried to use Google Maps, which has a limit of the number of addresses that can be added to a single map.
I initially tried BatchGeo, which look promising. The free version is limited to 250 entries and at $99/month, the Pro version would likely be too costly for a small library like Perry. I was finally able to find a free alternative in EasyMapMaker. The first 250 entries were quickly added to the map, but the 5,000+ other entries took nearly 3 hours to be added – longer than I was scheduled to be at Perry by the time I had found this solution. Additionally, I discovered some errors in the data. For example, the entry labeled Perry Elementary School did not include city and state; a Perry Elementary School in Iowa was added instead of the one in Ohio. I will be double-checking the data before producing the final map.