Collection Analysis with Circulation Data: What Usage Can Tell Us about Weeding and Collection Devel

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Collection Analysis with Circulation Data What
Usage Can Tell Us about Weeding and Collection
Development

• Jennifer E. Knievel and Heather Wicht
• University of Colorado
• Lynn Silipigni Connaway
• OCLC, Inc.

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Univ. of Colorado at Boulder

• Research I, Doctoral granting institution
• 26,500 FTE
• Libraries hold 3 million volumes (6/30/03)
• 87,000 ILL requests in 2003
• 60,000 Lending Requests
• 27,000 Borrowing Requests

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Project Origins

• Remote storage project at CU-Boulder
• Collaboration with OCLC mining WorldCat
• Collection development study by John N. Ochola,
  Baylor University
• Planning of pilot project
• Identify data to be analyzed, collected in future
• Assess usefulness of data to bibliographers

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Purpose of Study

• Compare subject distribution of
• UCB holdings
• ILL borrowing requests
• Circulation

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Local Systems

• Software
• Innovative Interfaces
• CLIO Database
• Data Gathering Methods
• Innovative Create Lists
• CLIO Microsoft Access Queries

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Project Scope

• Books only
• Law library excluded
• Gov Docs excluded
• Theses/dissertations excluded
• Foreign language books excluded
• 20 of ILL requests
• ILL borrowing transactions 1998-2002
• Cancelled (owned) requests excluded
• Circulations 1995-2003/1998-2002
• Non-circulating items excluded

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Data Collected

• ILL
• Request Origin, OCLC ,Title, Author, Edition,
  Publisher, Pub Date, ISBN, Patron Status Dept,
  Request Status
• Circulation
• OCLC , Title, Author, Publisher, Pub Date, ISBN,
  LCC, Total Checkouts
• Holdings
• OCLC, Title, Author, Publisher, Pub Date, ISBN,
  LCC

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Numbers

• 970,784 books held in WorldCat
• 318,517 books circulated 1998-2002
• 1,638,740 circulations on those books 1995-2003
• 22,064 borrowing requests for books 1998-2002

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Data Manipulation

• ILL requests lacked LCC numbers
• Mapped to WorldCat records by OCLC
• All data sets mapped by LCC
• 600 North American Title Count (NATC) subject
  categories
• 24 Research Libraries Group (RLG) Conspectus
  Divisions

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Results

• Overall holdings
• Total holdings
• No multiple copies counted, just titles
• Derived from OCLC WorldCat, but could be pulled
  locally

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Interpretation

• Overall holdings
• Some subjects have very high publishing output
• Some are strongly dominated by journal literature
  or other non-book formats (e.g. scores)

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Results

• Average transactions per item
• Transactions in a subject
• Items circulated in a subject
• Transactions/items average transactions per
  item
• Example 10,000 transactions, 5,000 items,
  average 2 transactions per item

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Interpretation

• Average transactions per item
• High average 7.4 circs per item
• Extremely active subject area
• Where is activity occurring?
• Low average 3.1 circs per item
• Low check out rate
• Is collection relevant? What kind of usage?

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Results

• Percentage of items circulated
• Total items in a subject
• Items circulated in a subject
• Circulated /items in subject percentage
  circulated
• Example 8,000 items in subject, 2,000 items
  circulated 25 items circulated

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Interpretation

• Percentage of items circulated
• High percentage 43.3
• Almost half of books circulated during study
• Circulation is widely distributed across subject
• Low percentage 14.9
• Less than one quarter of books circulated
• Circulation is very narrow, or use is mostly
  in-house

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Results

• Ratio of holdings to ILL requests
• Comparing apples to oranges, but still useful
• Total items in subject
• ILL requests in subject
• Items in subject ILL requests ratio
• Example 12,000 items in subject, 1,000 requests
  121

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Interpretation

• Ratio of holdings to ILL requests
• High ratio 91
• Many requests in that subject area
• Evaluate whether local collection is serving user
  needs
• Low ratio 1441
• Very few requests in that subject area
• Various interpretations

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Example Sociology

• Medium number of holdings 43,437
• High transactions per item 6.0
• High percentage items circulated 41.0
• High ratio holdings ILL requests 26.01
• Interpretation

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Getting Your Data

• Define a book
• Include or exclude gov docs, dissertations,
  microprint, non-circulating items, foreign
  language, branch libraries
• Make sure definition of book matches for every
  data set
• Identify a time period
• What data is available for all three data sets?

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Getting Your Data

• Figure out what you need
• Holdings bib records (not item records)
• Circulations transaction tallies, including
  dates if possible
• ILL borrowing initiated requests

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Comparing Your Data

• OCLC numbers for all items
• Combine data sets into a database (e.g. Access)
• Use LCCs to classify into Conspectus and NATC

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Questions?

• Jennifer E. Knievel
• Humanities Reference Librarian, CU Boulder
• 303-492-8887
• jennifer.knievel_at_colorado.edu

Heather Wicht Electronic Resources Librarian, CU
Boulder 303-492-4234 heather.wicht_at_colorado.edu