How was the Gardner-Harvey Library used in 2022/23?

Here are the full annual statistics from fiscal year 2023 (the 2022/23 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.

Much like last academic year, we were open during the semesters from 8am to 7pm from Monday to Thursday and open on Fridays from 8am to 5pm. A preponderance of Middletown classes were held online for Fall and Spring (roughly 65%), so we did still see a smaller than pre-Pandemic number of students and faculty on campus and therefore in the library. But attendance at our events increased, as did some other measurable uses of the library.

This year will certainly be notable for the replacement of the library’s roof, which began in June 2023. The tarps and buckets used to contain leaks and protect the library and its inhabitants will soon be a sight of the past!

These statistics reflect what happened between July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023. Some stats we keep locally, others we pull from university-wide or OhioLINK-wide systems, and some are provided by database vendors.

Read on for full details on these and other activities.

On Average

Taking the statistics below and guesstimating a total Middletown community of 1500 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 two items from the library each year (reserves and local/MU/OhioLINK collection items)

- visits the library 12 times per year

- accesses the library web site seven times per year.

- participates in a library instruction session or an embedded librarian course once every two years (if she is a student).

Now on to the detailed analysis!

Both a Borrower and a Lender Be

- GHL patrons checked out 1143 books and DVDs from us (744 from our local collection, 230 ordered from other MU libraries, and 169 items ordered from OhioLINK - that means that 35% of the items used by campus patrons came from libraries beyond GHL). That is a 10% decrease in GHL patron borrowing over 2021-2022.

- The GHL collection registered 3615 checkouts (that's the 744 items checked out by Middletown patrons above, plus 2232 items sent to OhioLINK users, and 639 sent to other MU libraries - that means that 79% of the uses of our materials came from libraries beyond GHL). That is a 45% increase in total lending over 2021-2022. 

- GHL patrons checked out 1497 reserve items from us (this includes faculty-placed course reserves, textbooks on reserve, study rooms, laptops, and other equipment). That is a 47% increase from 2021-2022. Textbooks on reserve checkouts totaled 41 in 2021-22, a decrease of 23% from 2021-22. 

- In terms of building up our collection, Middletown faculty, staff, and students ordered 2948 items to add to our collection this year. That is a 47% increase from 2021-2022.  

- We registered a total of 5112 checkouts of items in our collection (reserves and circulating materials). The circulating items at GHL number 32,036, so each item in the collection circulated 0.15 times this year (all items in our library circulate). 

The Quest for Information

- 29 people visit our web site every day. That's a total of 10,570 visits for the year, by 3,227 unique individuals. That's a 7% decrease in visits and a 44% decrease in unique visitors from 2021-22.

- Gardner-Harvey Librarians also create and maintain (with our colleagues at the Rentschler Library in Hamilton or University Libraries in Oxford) subject and course guides called LibGuides for our databases and other information sources. 

Helping You Find What You Need

- In face to face and synchronous Zoom sessions, we gave library instruction presentations in 21 classes this year, reaching 201 students (an increase of 233% from 2021-2022). 

- Our Embedded Librarian program reached students from 23 course sections in their Canvas course sites during the academic year (that is a 20% decrease from 2021-2022). We helped over 434 students with their information needs through the program.

A Place for Work, Study, and Remove from the World

- GHL was open 53 hours per week during the regular semesters in 2022-2023 (reducing hours for the summer and winter and spring breaks).

- We averaged 86 visitors per day, for a total of 17869 visits this year (through April 25, 2023). This is based on our door counter system, which had several breakdowns during the year (it completely quit on April 25, 2023). Even so, this reflects a 30% increase from 2021-2022. Our best attended day was February 8, 2023, with 220 visitors. We had 161 days with 50 or more visitors (78% of our open days).

- We converted one of our study rooms into the GHL Lounge (shown in the photo above), a spot for students to relax, play with our Nintendo Switch and Oculus VR headset, get free coffee and snacks, and use our microwave and refrigerator.

- With increased needs for participating in Zoom sessions for synchronous online courses, and lessening of restrictions for people to meet in small groups, we had eight study rooms checked out 1188 times this year by students, faculty, and staff members. That represents a 59% increase from 2021-22.  

- We hosted 50 events in FY23, a mixture of in-person and in-person/Zoom simultaneously.  These included:

• Nine MUM Book Discussion Group meetings.

• Five Diversity Book discussions (co-sponsored with the Rentschler Library and the Regional Centers for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion). 

• Nine TEC Lab workshops, three TEC Lab certificate program sessions, and three pop-up making workshops.

• Seven National Parks geology/archaeology presentations by Dr. Tammie Gerke.

• Four Inside Biology talks by Dr. Al Cady.

• "Southern Ohio Legends and Lore" with author James Willis

• Our Human Library event.

• Six "Camper's Choice" sessions for the STEAM Studio program in July 2022 and June 2023.  

Total attendance for the events was 636 participants, for an average of 12 people per event.  

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! We really appreciate the opportunity to meet your needs in the library and remotely during this year of the pandemic, and we look forward to even more improvements in 2023/24).

The Gardner-Harvey Library Staff