LINSCHEID

LIBRARY

Statistics! Librarians Love Them, But

What Do They Mean?

Dana Belcher, Asst Library DirectorEast Central University

iCon 2013August 2, 2013

Why Keep Statistics?LINSCHEID LIBRARY

Assessment• Measurement of services &

resources• Student Learning Outcomes!!!!

Annual Reports• Checkouts• Purchases• Instructions• Use, etc.

Surveys

Types of StatisticsLINSCHEID LIBRARY

Began working with the University Assessment Committee in 2006• All about student learning

outcomes• Struggle for libraries• We don’t see the end results

from our instructions• We don’t grade papers

• ECU focused on reference & instruction services, and high-quality resources.

AssessmentLINSCHEID LIBRARY

High Quality ResourcesLINSCHEID LIBRARY

Access Numbers 2008 2009 2010 2011Difference

from last CY % Change

Database Full-text 79,436 83,230 78,240 84,207 5,967 7.63%

ILL Borrowing Articles 520 793 568 743 175 30.81%

ILL Borrowing Books 407 413 308 527 219 71.1%

ILL Lending Articles 439 384 313 305 -8 -2.56%

ILL Lending Books 575 591 505 410 -95 -18.81%

Circulation Checkouts 8,909 10,212 9,418 10,448 1,030 10.94%

Circulation Renewals 1,101 883 872 765 -107 -12.27%

Reserve Checkouts 2,113 1,301 1,463 3,140 1,677 114.63%

E-reserves 102 282 1,352 1,676 324 23.96%

In-house use monographs 2,281 4,299 6,158* 4,710 -1,448 -23.51%

In-house use periodicals 1,530 1,534 2,020 1,305 -715 -35.4%

Total 97,413 103,922 101,217 108,236 7,019 6.93%

• Numbers made no sense• No trend could be detected• Focus was on big picture• Entire collection numbers• How does that fit into the

university?

Shell GameLINSCHEID LIBRARY

geocaching.com

Moved to total Student Learning Outcomes (SLO)• SAILS – university buy in• UNIV 1001 Freshman Seminar• UNIV 3001 General Ed Seminar

• In-house Assessment tools• SAILS 1.2 Developing

appropriate search terms• SAILS 3.2 Articulating

evaluation criteriahttp://ecok.libguides.com/assessment

Tools

Assessment RefocusedLINSCHEID LIBRARY

Freshman compared to Juniors:• Instruction numbers• Can now help in decision making• What SAILS criteria were weak –

beef up instruction in those skills• What SAILS criteria improved –

did instructions during those two years correlate?

• Provide results by discipline to academic departments – lead-in to future information literacy sessions

ResultsLINSCHEID LIBRARY

• More numbers!• Still big picture with no

correlation to academic departments or the university

• No structure among multiple library departments

• Refocus was needed, desperately

Annual ReportsLINSCHEID LIBRARY

First focus - to create a template• Provost’s requirements• Work plan items• Program data &

accomplishments• Data in context• Departmental Projects

• Personnel• Summation

TemplateLINSCHEID LIBRARY

No more big picture• Break down into academic

departments• Group departments into colleges

& schools

ILS (Innovative)• PCODE2 = Classification• PCODE3 = Major (based on

Admission’s code)• PTYPE = Type of Patron

Data in ContextLINSCHEID LIBRARY

Master file in Excel of P codes & colors:

PCODE3LINSCHEID LIBRARY

The big picture is now in smaller, more digestible chunks.

No longer what the library has done, but who and how it is being used.• Provides the needed connection

to the university & individual academic departments.

Now easier to compare these numbers to external numbers, i.e., enrollment.

ResultsLINSCHEID LIBRARY

Web Access Management (WAM)• Tracks connections to databases

from non-institutional networked computers• Laptops• Smart phones• Home computers

Tracked since 2007-2008• Never used data except to report

number of connects• Does report by PCODE3

Unused DataLINSCHEID LIBRARY

Vendor supplied COUNTER statistics• Proves resources are being used• Doesn’t tell you who uses them• Takes a lot of time gathering

them

Problem: How do connects (WAM) intersect with COUNTER statistics?

Solution: Excel and percentages

Aggregate VendorsLINSCHEID LIBRARY

Number of database connections by major for AY12-13• Majors listed with ‘total’ indicate

more than one degree available• Connects not associated with a

college/school are segregated out• Not included in

totals/percentages used in calculations

• Allows comparison of apples to apples

Handout 1LINSCHEID LIBRARY

Number of connections compared to full-text use• Eliminated any databases not providing

full-text• Inserted two rows between databases• First: divided each major’s total

connects by the total connects of all majors to come up with a percentage of connects

• Second: took the percentage of connects and multiplied by the total full-text (COUNTER) for that database

• The total for the percentage row for all majors = 100%

• The total for the full-text row for all majors = total full-text for that database

Handout 2LINSCHEID LIBRARY

At-a-glance, you can see what databases are being used by each academic department.

Reminder: these statistics only track connections made by non-institutional networked computers.

For AY1213, total connections = 1,115,228 with 249,849, or 22.40% from institution networked computers.

For AY1213, total connections by major = 762,921, or 68.41%. Remaining connections were made by non-academic department entities.

Using the previously mentioned master Excel file of patron codes, I can quickly insert college/ school codes to group academic departments.

Connects all the pieces into one picture• Enrollment numbers provided by

Academic Affairs• All other numbers provided in

annual reports• Findings:• AY1213 – not all library

statistics gathered based on PCODE3, or major

• AY1314 – steps have been implemented to gather as much as possible based on PCODE3

Master TableLINSCHEID LIBRARY

At-a-glance, the correlation between size of college/school and parts of the library.• It’s no longer that the library had 9,000+ checkouts, but that

CEP had 24% of the checkouts and they are 25% of the total enrollment.

• Easier to see where there are strengths and weaknesses.

Master Table Exploded:• Each item is coded to a library department.• All numbers entered come directly from departmental annual

reports.• Highlighted areas weren’t counted by major for AY1213.• All areas are now being counted by major for AY1314 thru use

of other ILS codes or Excel functions.

Other Master Table – designed the same & includes all OTHER statistics

Libraries need to make internal statistics correlate more to the university

• Refocused assessment to true SLOs, providing individual results to academic departments.

• Refocused annual reports to also provide individual results to academic departments.

RecapLINSCHEID LIBRARY

Dana Belcherdbelcher@ecok.edu

580.559.5564

Any files shown or spoken about are available – just email me.

Follow-upLINSCHEID LIBRARY