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In this issue:
Dialogue (June 1990) - Statistical Reporting
by Claudette John, CIGNA Corporation
As promised at the end of the last "Dialogue," I am starting a new topic with this issue: statistical reporting for small company and institutional archives. My guess is that most of you have reporting requirements and that you probably speak to management in the terms it understands best--you quantify. The first of these columns on reference is about my experience at NA/CIGNA and should get us started; the next one I have reserved for the comments of Newsletter readers. After that I’ll address other archival functions that lend themselves to quantitative analysis.
The first quantitative report that I did was for NA in 1977 when the Office of the Corporate Secretary, of which the Archives was a part, began to require weekly reports. It was a simple count of reference requests for the week. Then, as now, my goal was to collect and report the numbers in the fastest and simplest way possible without sacrificing accuracy. I developed a form that was completed as each request was received and answered. It included the date and the name, phone number, location and department or affiliation of the requestor; the question and a brief summary of the answer or a list of the materials supplied. I noted in the text of the weekly report requests that were particularly time consuming. The number of requests was totaled at the end of the year. Nothing-more.
After INA merged with Connecticut General in 1982, forming CIGNA, the quantitative reporting gradually became more sophisticated, in part, I think, because the Archives was moved from the Law Division to Administrative Services; in part because I had eight bosses in five years and realized that numbers would support my attempts to explain what the Archives did and why we were important to the company. I began to report statistics monthly and to include in the text information on who our major clients were and how the records were used. Large projects were summarized.
Initially, when the emphasis was on service, that was enough. Later, during corporate "downsizing," I went back to the research request forms and did a numerical analysis of our major clients by division, noting the kinds of reference service we had provided. Compiling this information enabled me to do several things:
1. Ask our most important clients to speak for the Archives.
2. Show that the services we provided were necessary and argue that they would be more
expensive and less effective if the responsibility were assumed by each division separately.
3. Prove that the Archives was used by the lines of business as well as by corporate divisions. (Corporate expenses are allocated to the income -producing divisions, and the lines have become increasingly reluctant to pay for anything they deem unnecessary.)
4. Make a case, in quantitative terms, for retaining archival services within the company. (Reference statistics were only a part of this case. Others will be discussed in future columns.)
One difficult requirement that I have never been able to satisfy is to report on the quality of our work statistically. How do you quantify quality? My first boss, when I blithely announced in a Monday morning staff meeting that I had answered a record twenty-five requests for information and documents in the past week, teased, "Yes but did you answer them correctly?” I was lucky. He understood that quality is more important than quantity in the world of archives. It has not always been so easy. I wish I could find a way to quantify quality. The comparative statistics that I have compiled since 1986 are a start. They show that we have responded to more requests for information each year and that while we have added new client departments, our old ones keep coming back. Beyond that, I must rely on brief summaries of accomplishments and, in dire circumstances, on client references.
Do you have questions about what I have described so briefly? Have you developed methods for compiling and using reference statistics? Please contact me: Claudette John, CIGNA Corporation Archives, 1600 Arch Street, Box 7716, Philadelphia, PA 19192; or phone (215) 523-3293. I am looking forward to including your comments in the next “Dialogue."