How was the library used in 2012-2013?

With the fiscal year just ending, here are the full annual stats for several of the Gardner-Harvey Library's (GHL) services. I hope you will find them useful to see how people use the library. How do you compare to the average GHL user?

These stats reflect what's happened this year, between July 1, 2012 to June 30, 2013. Some stats we keep locally, others we pull from university-wide or OhioLINK-wide systems, and some are provided by database vendors.

Both a Borrower and a Lender Be
- GHL patrons checked out 3,739 books, DVDs, and videos from us (1,675 from our local collection, 1,265 ordered from other MU libraries, and 799 items ordered from OhioLINK - that means that more than half of the items used by campus patrons came from libraries beyond GHL). That is a 15% decrease from 2011-2012. We also received 29 articles, books, and audiovisual items from libraries worldwide. 

- The GHL collection registered 4,506 checkouts (that's the 1,675 items checked out by Middletown patrons above, plus 1701 items sent to OhioLINK users, and 1,130 sent to other MU libraries - that means that more than 60% of the uses of our materials came from libraries beyond GHL). That is a 16% decrease from 2011-2012. We also sent 275 articles, books, and audiovisual items to libraries worldwide. 

- GHL patrons checked out 2,594 reserve items from us (this includes faculty-placed course reserves, textbooks on reserve, laptops, iPads, Wii games, and other equipment). That is an 24% decrease from 2011-2012. 

- In addition to the printed or physical materials above, Middletown patrons downloaded 3,108 e-books from the OhioLINK E-Book Center. That is a 66% decrease from 2011-2012.

- In terms of building up our collection, Middletown faculty and staff ordered 1,311 items to add to our collection this year. That is a 23% increase from 2011-2012.  That total includes 80 e-books.

- We registered a total of 7,141 checkouts of items in our collection (reserves and circulating materials). The circulating items at GHL number 24,477, so each item in the collection circulated 0.29 times this year (our total number of items is 28,894). 

- One additional item of interest on item checkouts that happen at our library is the number of items checked our to patrons of other OhioLINK libraries.  We had 226 items sent from OhioLINK libraries checked out at GHL by patrons from other OhioLINK institutions (using our Pickup Anywhere service).  We also had 41 of our items borrowed by these OhioLINK patrons in person.

The Quest for Information
- Middletown patrons downloaded 1,886 full-text articles from Ebsco databases provided to us by . This reflects a new way of measuring your search activity, mainly due to the addition of our OneSearch service in the fall of 2012.  Since that service searches multiple databases at once, our number of searches was multiplied by the number of databases.  So, we'll stick with article downloads and search sessions (2065 in 2012-2013).

- On their way to these databases, 47 people visit our web site every day. That's a total of 17,146 visits for the year, by 5,392 unique individuals. Visits and visitors are down about 7% from 2011-2012.

A Place for Work, Study, and Remove from the World
- GHL is open 65 hours per week.

- We average 191 visitors per day, for a total of 55,459 visits this year.  This reflects a 34% decrease from 2010-2011, but we lost all of our gate counters from July through the middle of September, and then one counter was out of operation for much of the end of fall and beginning of spring (we also lost our stats entirely for 2011-2012).

- We regularly schedule the library learning lab (GRD 111) for single class sessions. We also had 12 classes meet there weekly during fall semester and 9 met there during this spring. With some breaks in the early parts of the fall and spring semesters, we have been scheduling COMPASS placement testing sessions in the lab on Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays for incoming Middletown students since March 2009.  COMPASS testing ended in GRD 111 in July 2013 with the creation of a new lab in Johnston Hall.

- Our two STAR Lounges have been checked out 200 times this year. 

Helping You Find What You Need
- We logged a total of 1382 questions that we answered from our InfoDesk during the year, which averages out to nearly 5 per day.  We do not log every question,we answered, nor every time we check books out, but we try to capture all lengthy interactions with you.  39% of those questions involved technology questions, 34% focused on circulation procedures or policies, 15% were directing people to locations or resources in the library or on campus, and 12% were research-related.  73% of all questions were asked in-person at the desk, while 20% were by phone, 4% by text or instant messaging, and 3% came through email.  Below is an image of the most common words that the questions involved.

- Inside and outside of the library, we gave library instruction presentations in 87 classes this year, reaching 1599 students (a decrease of 6% from 2011-2012). The courses represented were from 17 different departments.

- Our Embedded Librarian program reached students from 67 course sections in their Niihka course sites during the academic year (that is an 8% increase over 2011-2012). We helped over 1611 students with their information needs through the program.

What don't we know about how the library is used?
- One key part missing from these figures is off-campus use of library resources: all off-campus use is tallied as MU-wide use, so we do not know how many Middletown patrons are using databases from home.  We have also lost meaningful data for on-campus use from some of our OhioLINK full-text resources.

- We don't have campus-specific stats for all database searches - we're missing uses of Lexis-Nexis and other databases.

- We hope you'll continue to let us know what you think about the library, what you need from us, and what materials we should order for the collection.

On Average
Taking these numbers and guesstimating a total Middletown community of 2500 students, faculty and staff members (and including community patrons), here's what can be said about the average person on campus. She:

- checks nearly three items out from the library in a year (reserves and local/MU/OhioLINK collection items)
- downloads about one full-text article each year.
- accesses the library web site seven times per year.
- views more than one e-book each year.
- participates in a library instruction session or an embedded librarian course once per year (if she is a student).

Thanks to everyone for making the library and its resources a vital part of your academic lives!