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.

Typos....

No, not mine. Though, I make them occassionally along with everyone else. I'm in the midst of selecting titles for my assigned disciplines. We're past half way through with our Fiscal Year, so I'm stepping up my efforts. To aid this process, I get electronic slips from a vendor who shall remain nameless. Below is the last part of a description for one of the titles, which it states is from the book jacket. I'm not sure if the typo is their's or the publisher's, but it gave me a good laugh.

"Rather than look at overall conceptual issues, which are already well covered elsewhere, this boob looks at the finer details of implementation in order to identify lessons, ideas and opportunities, both at the planning and design phase, and during implementation and review and evaluation."

Or, maybe it really is referring to the author.

Almost a year in a new job

Rules, Regulations, Laws, Statutes, Codes, Travel Documents, Monthly Statistics, Grants, Purchasing Guidelines, Hiring Processes

Wow... and that's all beyond showing up, doing training, managing a team of six, consulting with libraries, implementing projects, and learning the agency. It has been a whirlwind year. I am hopeful that within the next couple of months we will have hired someone to fill the Library Technology Consultant position. This will allow me to stop doing two jobs and finally settle into the manager role.

I have experienced times when I felt completely clueless and inept. Recently, I have actually had moments when I catch myself talking to someone and realize I sound like I know what I'm doing. It has been quite encouraging. I know I still have a long way to go to be the employee that I want to be, the program director that my boss would like me to be and to be the manager that the team needs me to be.

Someone told me many years ago that when you make a move, whether it's job or location, it takes a good year to get to a point where you feel like you have a clue what you're doing. My revision is that it takes a year to clue and longer to feel comfortable.

Me, an expert??

Well, this past month I had the opportunity to be interviewed by a graduate student. She was taking an instructional technology class and had to interview a consultant. Her field of interest is libraries. So when she googled, she found me.

I found the experience refreshing and revitalizing. I was able to share the experiences I've had in the past being an independent consultant AND what it is like to be attached to an organization. I certainly hope that she not only does well on her assignment but that something I said was helpful.


A link to her project

Video ratings...

Being in an academic library, video ratings are not something I've worried about, especially for documentaries, which I frequently order for my subject area of Business. One of these is Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. All the reviews on the title are tops. However, in the year I've been here, I've had two complaints from faculty. There are a couple of rather raunchey scences in the film, one which takes place in a strip club, which have been off putting to the faculty members. One faculty member had seen the edited version on PBS and didn't preview it before showing it in class. I guess it was a little uncomfortable. He later requested we order the edited version. There isn't one.

The second complaint came in about a week ago. Because of the first one, I knew what the issue was. The suggestion from reference was perhaps we could put a warning or something on the DVD. Do we do this? It made for an interesting discussion and the best we could come up with was perhaps a note to preview before showing in class. We are taking this under consideration, but in the meantime, I also pointed out that we have two other documentaries on Enron. Any thoughts?