Here are the full annual stats from fiscal year 2019 (the 2018/19 academic year) for several of the Gardner-Harvey Library's (GHL) services. I hope you will find them useful to see how people use the library.
These statistics reflect what happened between July 1, 2018 to June 30, 2019. Some stats we keep locally, others we pull from university-wide or OhioLINK-wide systems, and some are provided by database vendors.
Highlights for this year include:
- A 62% increase in library instruction sessions for courses.
- A 22% increase in embedded librarians working with course sections in Canvas.
- A 14% increase in borrowing materials by Middletown patrons.
- Many new events held in the library.
Read on for full details on these and other activities.
On Average
Taking the statistics below and guesstimating a total Middletown community of 2000 students, faculty and staff members (and including community patrons), here's what can be said about the average person on campus. She:
- checks out nearly four items from the library in a year (reserves and local/MU/OhioLINK collection items)
- visits the library 25 times per year
- accesses the library web site 10 times per year.
- participates in a library instruction session or an embedded librarian course once per year (if she is a student).
Now on to the detailed analysis!
- GHL patrons checked out 3,015 books and DVDs from us (1,176 from our local collection, 844 ordered from other MU libraries, and 995 items ordered from OhioLINK - that means that 61% of the items used by campus patrons came from libraries beyond GHL). That is a 14% increase in total borrowing over 2017-2018.
- The GHL collection registered 4,442 checkouts (that's the 1,176 items checked out by Middletown patrons above, plus 2,218 items sent to OhioLINK users, and 1042 sent to other MU libraries - that means that 73% of the uses of our materials came from libraries beyond GHL). That is a 2% decrease in total lending over 2017-2018.
- GHL patrons checked out 3,422 reserve items from us (this includes faculty-placed course reserves, textbooks on reserve, study rooms, laptops, iPads, and other equipment). That is a 27% decrease from 2017-2018. Textbooks on reserve checkouts totaled 527 in 2018-19, a decrease of 12% from 2017-18.
- In addition to those physical reserve items, we also place MU libraries-owned DVDs and VHS tapes on a digital reserve service called Video on Demand. We had 335 videos on there for classes to use in 2018-19, and they were viewed a total of 5,719 times. That is a decrease of 2% in views over 2017-2018.
- In terms of building up our collection, Middletown faculty, staff, and students ordered 2082 items to add to our collection this year. That is a 1% decrease from 2017-2018.
- We registered a total of 7,864 checkouts of items in our collection (reserves and circulating materials). The circulating items at GHL number 32,043, so each item in the collection circulated 0.24 times this year (all items in our library circulate).
The Quest for Information
- 56 people visit our web site every day. That's a total of 20,550 visits for the year, by 5,361 unique individuals. That's a 27% decrease in visits and an 8% decrease in unique visitors from 2017-2018.
- Gardner-Harvey Librarians also create and maintain subject guides to our databases and other information sources called LibGuides. In 2017-18, we were responsible for 38 LibGuides, either individually or in cooperation with our colleagues at the Rentschler Library in Hamilton or University Libraries in Oxford. Those guides received a total of 9,978 visits during the year, for an average of 262 visits per guide.
Helping You Find What You Need
- Inside and outside of the library, we gave library instruction presentations in 52 classes this year, reaching 921 students (an increase of 62% from 2017-2018).
- Our Embedded Librarian program reached students from 88 course sections in their Canvas course sites during the academic year (that is a 22% increase from 2017-2018). We helped over 1,704 students with their information needs through the program.
A Place for Work, Study, and Remove from the World
- GHL is open 57 hours per week.
- We averaged 195 visitors per day, for a total of 49,692 visits this year. This reflects a 7% decrease from 2017-2018. Our best attended day was August 28, 2018, with 646 visitors. We had 46 days with 300 or more visitors (18% of our open days)
- We regularly schedule the library learning lab (GRD 111) for single class sessions. We also schedule Study Room 110 for class sessions, with four classes meeting weekly in there during the fall semester and four classes meeting weekly during the spring semester during 2018-19.
- Our nine study rooms were checked out 2,060 times this year by students, faculty, and staff members. That represents a 28% decrease from 2017-18. The average uses per room also decreased from 318 in 2017-18 to 228 in 2018-19, which still shows a tremendous response to the rooms.
- We held several events in the library this year that we sponsored or co-sponsored. Aside from the monthly MUM Book Discussion Group meetings (for which we do not have attendance recorded), we had 26 events (16 TEC Lab workshops, 6 National Parks geology video/lectures, and 4 Tech Tuesday workshops)). Total attendance for Fall and Spring semesters was 75, for an average of 3 people per event (though we are missing the attendance for a number of events).
- We also hosted sessions for the Discover STEM program in October 2018, meetings of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) in November 2018 (featuring author Paul Ramos) and March 2019 (featuring educator George Sehi), an eight session Great Decisions foreign policy discussion series from January to April 2019, and poster presentations by students in GLG 121 and 244 in May 2019.
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 estimate a lot of you are).
- We don't have campus-specific stats for all database searches - we're missing uses of Nexis Uni, the EBSCO databases, and other databases that are tracked on a whole-university level.
- 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.
Thanks to everyone for making the library and its resources a vital part of your academic lives!
The Gardner-Harvey Library Staff
