I formerly worked at a college library where we had these devices. We went through three different units in the 9 years I was there, largely due to malfunctioning. There would be many days where we did not get a count at all, or the counter stopped working, perhaps, at 9 a.m. and we got no count the rest of the day until we were checking the numbers that night and saw, "Hmm, we only had 12 people in here today?" One time it broke and we shipped it to somewhere (Asia?) for repairs. We had no door counter for about 6 weeks then. Our doors to the library proper is where the counter was, so anyone just visiting the lobby for the circulation department--book returns, etc,, did not get counted. Conversely, anyone in the real library would get counted on entering, on going to the circ area, on re-entering, on going to the washroom in the lobby area, on re-entering, on going outside to make a phone call (some people were polite), on re-entering... We had some summer Saturdays when I would check the number on opening, resetting it to zero, and an hour later, knowing only two people had entered the building, would look at the counter and see, maybe, 24 showing. That was a nice number for making our reports look good, but if your goal is a useful count of people, you would be far better off to assign someone to go around and count heads every hour or so to tell you how many people are truly using the facility. We did this and used those numbers in planning staffing, etc., far more than the door counter numbers. Even if your counter only counts people going one way, there will still be numerous re-entries that keep the number highly inaccurate in terms of telling how many folks actually used your library on any given day. I truly don't think these things to be that useful. Derek Barth Bath Township Library On Wed, Apr 27, 2016 at 1:32 PM, Donna Winter < dwinter@livoniapubliclibrary.org> wrote:
We started using battery operated people counters that stick to the door frame and use beam break technology at the beginning of the year. They count both ingress and egress, so we divide by 2 to get a truer number. Since they are on our "regular" width doors, it's pretty rare that more than one person goes in at a time, unless it's an adult carrying a child. We decided to go low tech with ones that we record the count monthly and reset them manually.
There are higher end ones that will wifi counts to you, but we didn't want to spend that many bucks at this time.
I ordered through wecountpeople.com Brand name is TotalCounter.
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Donna Winter, Automation Services Librarian Livonia Public Library 32777 Five Mile Road Livonia, MI 48154 ph: 734-466-2675
----- Original Message -----
The Petoskey District Library is also interested, so please include me on any responses.
Thank you,
Mary Sue Prantera
From: michlib-l-bounces@mcls.org [mailto:michlib-l-bounces@mcls.org] On Behalf Of Leo Papa Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2016 11:42 AM To: 'Brandon D. Richards' <brichards@hlpl.lib.mi.us>; michlib-l@mcls.org Subject: Re: [Michlib-l] People counters
The Canton Public Library is also interested in this information, so please include me on any responses.
Thanks,
Leo Papa
Department Head, I. T.
papal@cantonpl.org
734-394-1207
From: michlib-l-bounces@mcls.org [ mailto:michlib-l-bounces@mcls.org ] On Behalf Of Brandon D. Richards Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2016 10:27 AM To: michlib-l@mcls.org Subject: [Michlib-l] People counters
Good afternoon! If anybody is willing, we're currently looking to gather recommendations for people counters. We're mostly concerned with getting an accurate count (people don't get counted twice, people walking side-by-side get accurately counted, etc) and having a simple way to retrieve and reset the data. Thanks!
Brandon Richards Technology Coordinator/Trainer Houghton Lake Public Library 4431 W. Houghton Lake Dr. Houghton Lake, MI 48629 Phone: 989.366.9230 URL: www.hlpl.org
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