Evaluating usage....

Gads. I didn't expect it to be this long between posts. However, the job does sometimes take over. The past several weeks I have been working on usage statistics. Bascially, the question is: how well are we doing with regards to what we are ordering? We started last year with FY 2005/06 and this year ran those stats again as well as for FY 2006/07. We run them by department, then I compile overall (or summary) stats for the collection as a whole. I was especially pleased this year because the report was modified to indicate whether a title was recieved on approval or from a firm order. I wasn't able to look at this last year.

The results are interesting. FY 2005/2006 is looking at two years of data. Overall, we have thus far circulated 45% of the materials ordered during that FY. That was up a little over 10% from the first year. For FY 2006/2007 we circulated about 1% less than the previous year, but we also ordered less. The interesting statistic, to me anyway, is that while a small number of titles seem to circulate, a high number of them circulate multiple times. This was almost across the board for all departments.

Approval vs. firm order. How did we fare? Well, in most cases firm orders ciruclated more than the approvals. Interestingly, in several departments where overall firm orders circulated more than approval, the titles with the highest circulation had more approval than firm order. We also saw this in reverse.

I'm not sure what one should hope for. More approvals circulating? More firm orders circulating? Or, maybe 50/50. Anyway, what does one glean from this? Well, several of my funds had approvals circulating more than firm orders. What I took away was that my approval plan was good. No tweaking needed. Perhaps, though, I should tweak my firm orders. I'm still working on a plan for this. Where approvals aren't circulating as much as firm orders, I'm thinking those plans need to be reviewed. It's my understanding that the approval plans haven't been reviewed in several years, so it's time to do that anyway.

For the curious, we ran the initial reports in Voyager and did the analysis in Excel. Fortunately, I'm fascinated by statistics, so it's somewhat of a fun exercise for me.

Approval plans and subject areas...

I'm now about three months into the new job and merrily selecting for my subject area - business. We use approval plans and slip plans for selecting. These are broken up into the following areas: Management, Marketing, Economics, Finance, and Accounting. Needless to say, some areas publish more than others. Also, some are more dependent on the library than others.

Each week I get an electronic slip list, which I go through. What has amazed me it what the jobber puts in certain categories. For example, all career guidance manuals, materials, etc. are in Accounting. So, Careers in Psychology shows up on the approval plan under Accounting. I admit, that one puzzles. But, because accounting doesn't publish that much, I'm rolling with the flow on that. For now. At some point, I may ask why the career manuals are under accounting. Then, there's just the plain odd stuff. And, I wonder if I'm the only one here (we have five Collection Development librarians working with different areas) receiving certain titles. Currently, I'm reviewing a title that I received a slip for that is given the subject area of "Home Economics" by the jobber, is on my Management slip list, and "chronicles a highly personal journey, with plenty of loafing stops along the way, through the hills and hollows of Southern Appalachia, in search of the tastes that define and sustain the region's people." Now, admittedly, I could be missing something, but to me it doesn't fit in any of the subject areas I cover.

Then, almost everything legal, falls under the Marketing profile. Again, some of it I can see, business law for example, but a lot of it is just plain legal with no relation to Marketing. Fortunately, the majority of it comes in slips so I can pick and choose. It just adds a bit of work to review a title that really has nothing to do with the subject.

The jobber doesn't always have a description and/or table of contents for the work. So, I find myself usually checking Global Books In Print for descriptions, which they generally have as well as fairly descriptive subject descriptions. But, if you check several sources - a couple of jobbers, GBIP, and Worldcat among others - nine times out of ten you will get different subject areas from all of them. The above title mentioned gets a subject of Cookery & Cooking/General from GBIP, Cooking from jobber number 2, and Cookery/American, Cookery/Applachian Region, Southern from WorldCat. Generally, it's the jobber that my approval plan is set up with that gets a somewhat goofy subject area. The more I do this, the more I'm intruigued with the different subject areas assigned by the different sources. I'm not alone. I've heard some of the other librarians puzzle over subjects that show up on their approval list as well.

In the end, I'm not sure it really matters. If the book doesn't fit my subject area, I don't order it. Hopefully, I'm not missing any titles this way either.