Circulation analysis: measuring collection use

By Tom Storey

The WorldCat Collection Analysis (WCA) service can now evaluate a library’s circulation activity to help identify potential collection development opportunities. Installed November 12, 2007, the new enhancement enables libraries to analyze their circulation data to see how their collections are being used.

Information about collection usage can inform decisions about weeding, movement to off-site storage, budget allocation, digitization and acquisitions.

“In conjunction with the other analyses available via WCA, circulation analysis gives libraries a robust portrait of their collection and can provide critical data to support their collection management decisions,” says Glenda Lammers, Global Product Manager, Business Intelligence.“Early feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. I hope libraries continue to find this to be a valuable addition to the WCA service.”

The data within circulation analysis gives your library the ability to identify:

• what items are circulating

• what items are not circulating

• how frequently items are circulating

• what percentage of your collection in any subject, format, publication date range, etc., is circulating

• the average number of checkouts per title circulated

• total checkouts by circulation date

Here’s how it works:

To create a circulation analysis in WCA, you must first run a report via your integrated library system (ILS) to extract a minimal set of data elements. The report should be saved as either an XML or a tab-delimited .txt file. The report should include all items circulated within a given date range and may contain up to five years of data.

The following data elements are required for each circulation transaction:

• OCLC institution symbol

• OCLC accession number

• Barcode

• Checkout date

Professional spreadsheets and graphs make it easy to share circulation analysis data with colleagues and administrators.

Then, upload that file to OCLC using the WorldCat Services Administrative Module. For step-by-step instructions on how to upload your circulation report, see the WorldCat Collection Analysis—Circulation Analysis documentation.

One of the first to try circulation analysis in WCA is Assumption College, Worcester, Massachusetts. Prior to the availability of this functionality, library staff was compiling and recombining data from their ILS—a time consuming task—to generate reports.

Circulation analysis in WCA streamlines the process and makes it possible to view collection activity—both the current calendar year and back to 2002—without having to ask anyone to pull together a report, says Dawn Thistle, Director of Library Services. “It is very easy to use, yet it allows me to drill down into the conspectus divisions and categories so that I can pinpoint exactly where the greatest use is taking place, making it much simpler to make connections between the curriculum and the circulation of library materials.”

Thistle loves the circulation ratio data, which provide the percentage of titles that have circulated in different disciplines, as well as the circulation frequency data, which give her the ability to identify areas—even individual titles—that receive a lot of repeated use. “We will use the frequency data to guide us as we purchase additional copies of heavily used titles,” she says.

She also is looking at circulation analysis together with interlibrary loan data, which WCA also provides. “Over the years we have tried to collect our ILL circulation data and organize it according to LC call number, but that has been more of a challenge than we have been able to accomplish to date. WCA now makes that comparison much simpler.”

With the addition of circulation analysis, Thistle sees WorldCat Collection analysis becoming a suite of assessment tools that makes it much easier to study a library’s collection from many different angles—in whole or in pieces, and often in a single afternoon!

“Collecting this data is no longer the issue. Many of the difficulties and barriers to doing collection assessment have been removed, and we can finally get around to doing the actual analysis.

“Circulation data is important because it helps us justify our existence! It is important to be able to demonstrate that library materials are being USED, and that the library is not simply a warehouse of academic information, or, worse, a budget black hole. If a college prides itself on teaching students to be critical thinkers and encouraging them to ask questions and move beyond the textbook, library circulation data can help to show that this is happening.”

Next-gen cataloging | Managing the collective collection