Durick Library Collection Analysis Using Circulation Statistics and Item Counts

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Durick Library Collection Analysis Using
Circulation Statistics and Item Counts
Laura Crain Associate Director, Collection
Services Library and Information Services Saint
Michaels College June 2, 2006
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Origin of Project

• Project modeled after
• University of Colorado Boulder study
• by Heather Wicht, Jennifer Knievel and OCLC

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Project Scope

• Compare Circulation transactions
• within LC subject classifications
• Durick Library holdings
• Included by LC class
• Books
• Audio Spoken and musical CDs
• Multimedia CD-ROM
• Included Visual VHS, DVD
• Excluded
• Archives, Periodicals, LLRC, Maps, Microform,
  Online area, Rare Books, Reference, Reference
  Annex, Special Collections, Storage, ESL readers
• Circulation transactions 2001-2006 (5 years)
• 6/1/2001-5/30/2006

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Project usefulness

• Illustrates high and low use subject areas in
  book format
• Provides guidance for decreasing, maintaining or
  increasing monographic budget in subject areas
• Illustrates whether subject holdings are adequate
  to meet user needs

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Analysis of Durick Library holdings

• As of 6/2/06 Durick Library contains
• approx. 177,290 circulating books
• approx. 6440 circulating non-book items
• Audio cassette 460
• Audio CD 651
• Visual VHS 4204
• Visual DVD 890
• Multimedia CD-ROM 273
• Of those holdings, this study analyzed
• 879 DVDs
• 4204 VHS
• 174,007 books
• 715 spoken word/musical recordings and multimedia
  CD-ROMs in LC class

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5 Year Circulation Numbers

• From 2001-2006
• Book circulations 109,285
• Average of transactions per item .628
• DVD circulations 7919
• Average of transactions per item 9
• (DVDs were moved to browsing shelves January
  2006).
• VHS circulations 16,816
• Average of transactions per item 4

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Greatest Number of Circ Transactions per item by
format / subject
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Least number of transactions per item by
subject--limited to LC class areas with holdings
above 500 items
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Interpretation of a low use area

• Scenario 1
• holdings are old and need to be weeded/updated
• Scenario 2
• book format less desirable look toward shifting
  spending to journals/databases

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Greatest Number of Holdings by Subject w/ Circ
Transactions
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Limitations of the study

• Data does not track circulations by publication
  dates (use may increase if tracking circ data
  using titles published 2000 present)
• Data does not provide percentage of items
  circulated (total number of books circulated in a
  subject area). Data only provides number of
  transactions in a subject area (e.g. 1 title
  might circulate 10 times).