Print on the Margins: Circulation Trends in Major Research Libraries

Print on the Margins: Circulation Trends in Major Research Libraries

I like to amuse myself by translating academic library research into public library terms. Something we have been struggling with here in PLS has been accurate reporting of circulation statistics, how we define "circulation," how we create the metrics, and how that data is used.

Is it more important to have "exact" numbers or numbers that suggest general trends? How can trends be extrapolated from the data available? What is the risk of publishing "negative" data, and what are the benefits? How does one find the opportunity in the trends?

I was struck by several points in this article: that the average number of checkouts per enrolled student is more valuable than net number of checkouts, that patron trends are changing dramatically (and that library worldviews are not...), and that various data points complement each other to provide a full sense of materials use (and that negative data is not a value judgement, but a piece of the puzzle, and perhaps on opportunity.)

In public library terms, how could we most effectively capture patron trends? We have a far less homogeneous set of users (homeschoolers typically checkout more items than "average" patrons.) We have multiple, very different, individual libraries. How could we - at the system level, where we are responsible for extracting the data, and generating the reports - create the metrics that would provide useful and consistent information, to all libraries, that could be used for comparative purposes and local decision making?