In November last year I posted a comment on The Practical Librarian's blog about measuring circulation. The blog post discusses the limitations of using circulation statistics alone as a method of measuring library performance. In my comment I spoke about how I planned to measure the usage of items purchased following tutor requests in the hope of obtaining a better picture of the impact of our stock management. I was curious to see whether usage reflected the demand perceived by tutors.
Six months later and I've just taken a look to see what the statistics can tell me. Unfortunately, there are so many variables affecting the usage that I've found the exercise to be almost pointless! Since September we have ordered 79 titles following a request from a tutor. First I want to discuss those that have been borrowed.
The level of usage cannot give an accurate picture of the demand as there are several factors that can give the illusion of genuine issues and some factors that mean not all use if reflected in the statistics:
- transit between LRC sites - we have reader records set up for each location and issue any items in transit to them so that we can track where they are
- mis-use of self-issue - we have seen several instances in the usage information where a student has managed to issue, return and then issue a book to themselves in quick succession!
- display browsing - from January I have put all new stock on display. It is impossible to tell whether borrowing from the display is as a result of browsing or whether the book was particularly sought for. I've watched with interest over several days as one particular students 'borrows' the BTEC textbook for sport from the display whilst he works on a computer and puts it back when he's finished!
Out of the 79 titles 30 have not been borrowed but, again, I can't make any assumptions about why this might be:
- tutors may not be recommending the titles to students, or they may be but the students just aren't bothered!
- by the time the book is shelf-ready the topic has passed and it won't really be needed again until the same time the following year
- the title might be the course textbook so the tutors simply feel we 'ought' to have it in the LRC
This exercise, although not a success, is a great example at demonstrating how we cannot rely on statistics alone and that if we are going to use them we must carefully consider whether there are any other factors that can significantly distort the image they give.
In terms of what I was trying to achieve I've had to accept some truths:
- in a tutor's eyes every title they request is deemed important
- we must trust that they are passing these recommendations on to their students
On the other hand, there are also some truths that reinforce the role of the librarian in collections management:
- the librarian is best placed to judge how many copies should be bought (tutors often want several, particularly of the core textbooks) through local knowledge of use, demand and student behaviour
- relevant titles should be promoted to students through their course areas in Moodle - we can't expect them to be enthusiastic or expert searchers.James Clay expands this point further in his blog post on adding resources to VLEs.
Well we are now two months into our collections project and I thought I'd better write an update and reflect on how it's going.
The LRC has been given a budget which we have been able to allocate to a collections project. Back in February our Director of Learning Resources had the first of his meetings with Heads of Faculties and Schools. In these meetings he outlined the scope and purpose of the project: an opportunity to update and refresh the LRC collection; ensure that the collection reflects current and emerging curriculum requirements; move the collection towards e-books if appropriate and; establish effective approaches to curriculum liaison. The Heads were given a form to complete with any resource requests from tutors within their areas. The form asked for specific details such as course, number of students on course, whether essential or recommended, priority and whether an e-book would be appropriate if available. By the middle of April we had received forms from most of the schools within each faculty.
My first job was, within the space of a week, to go through each form, check whether the requested title was in stock and, if not, check e-book availability and purchase costs through our supplier. We have three faculties: ACE (Art, design and media; Care; Engineering), HBAS (Humanities, Business And Science) and PALS (Professional And Leisure Studies). Each school within the faculties returned the information slightly differently. Some combined several tutors' requests onto one form, some returned one form for each tutor - I received 37 forms from ACE, 5 from HBAS and 8 from PALS. Some didn't even use the form so I've had to transcribe the details from their email. Even though some forms were very short and only contained a few titles the largest number of requests has come from the ACE faculty and, in particular, the two schools of Art, design and media and Care. One of the other problems I encountered was that some tutors hadn't given all the required information on the form so we are chasing these now.
On Monday I had a meeting with the Director of Learning Resources and the Student Support Manager to plan how we would proceed. It came to light very quickly that our lack of acquisition guidelines (in terms of how many copies should we purchase) is a big hindrance. In the past we have been very cautious when ordering as our budget has been low. However, we were all agreed that if a title was only 'recommended' reading, as opposed to 'essential', we would only buy 1 copy initially. Of course more copies can be ordered if there is demand but this is a good starting point. Another hindrance involves e-books. Before purchasing e-books we want to make sure that tutors understand that if an e-book is available for their print request we will likely purchase the e-book plus one print copy and that they understand how e-books work. By the end of the meeting, however, I had my next objective: go through the lists and identify any title that is 'recommended' and where there is only a print copy available. We can then place these as our initial order.
Yesterday I finished going through the forms identifying the appropriate titles. I have also compiled a list of queries, e.g. where more information is needed on the form; should we order the accompanying CD?; this was published more than 5 years ago - is the tutor aware of this and happy with it? Once these are clarified we can place the first order! The next step will then be to update the tutors on the progress, plan how many copies to buy of 'essential titles' and look at ordering the e-books.
I'm really enjoying this project. I believe I've found my niche now in acquisitions so its great to have something like this to work on :)
