Stats

I recently posted to my Facebook page that I was working on the fun part of stats. Immediately a friend replied that she wasn't aware that there was a fun part. Another friend suggested the fun part was when you are done. He was right (although he later confirmed my suspicion that he was talking about the beer you drink when you are done). The data tabulation is a necessary evil: the fun part for me is looking for patterns once all the data is there.

This year's "annual report" is a little different from previous years: the deadline is moved up so it's really an 11 month report (Sept 2009-July 2010). And it's needed urgently so I'll work on the full stats for comparison with last year later. But, I have identified a couple of cool things I'd like to share with you.

Quick Checks:
Our self service check-out machines have been very popular. The account for about 23% of the 326,291 loans we charged out over the past 11 months.

Email Reference:
The Access Sups answered 501 Ask-A-Librarian (email reference) questions on Access Services topics, or about 14% of the total traffic on AAL.

Offsite:
We discarded over 50,000 duplicate volumes (including print journals we have electronically) and sent 253,218 low-use titles offsite. We now have about a million items at our Clancy-Cullen managed facility in Patterson, New York. This year users requested 21,667 items. Although still a reasonable 2% recall rate, this number is three times what it was last year.

Recalls:
28,898 recalls were placed on materials charged out by other users. This means that 9% of all check-outs are recalled. While certainly staggering, this number isn't all that surprising: recalls jumped when we rolled out Aleph, presumably because the request button is more prominent.

Stacks:
Our Stacks staff shelved 532,879 bound volumes and 7,078 current periodicals and newspapers. Last year's numbers appear to be an anomaly, but if you look over the past two years in-house use is down 15% while general reshelving is up 6%.

Microforms:
Microform use is down 18% but is still over 8,000 uses for the year.

Entrances:
I'm still waiting for final numbers on swipes into Bobst (usually they are over a million) but we issues 2,210 collection passes, 14,905 general passes and 9,838 visitor passes for a grand total of almost 27,000 passes, many of which allow multiple entries.

Quick Search:
The number of Quick Searches placed is down about 15% to 2,772. Percentages found on the three searches remains just about the same (58%).

Interlibrary Lending:
We filled 13,444 of the 24,333 requests we received or 55%. Common reasons we are unable to fill requests are that we lack the volume requested (27%), the item is in use or in processing (18%), the item is non-circulating (18%) or the item is not on the shelf (12%).

Interlibrary Borrowing:
We obtained 30,281 of the 40,005 items requested by our users. By far the most common reason we cancel borrowing requests is because we own the item (42%). Other reasons include not being able to fill the request by the user's deadline (13%), or the item is not available from all possible lenders (17%). The number of returnable (book) ILL requests is on the rise: this year 61% of our requests were for returnables.

Reserve:
We processed 1,158 course lists, 4% less than last year. We also created 1012 durable links for professors in 146 courses (that they can then add to their blackboard courses). This number is also down compared with last year.

There is still a lot more to do for our annual report before I get that beer, but I wanted to share some of what I had found out with you.

It's so easy being green!

The Interlibrary Loan department was recently asked to participate in a study about ILL "green" practices. The study, conducted by Dennis Massie, the RLG SHARES coordinator for OCLC and California Environmental Associates, a consulting group, hopes to get a snapshot of what Interlibrary Loan departments across the nation are doing to make their day-to-day business more environmentally-friendly.

The concept of a "green" ILL department is still evolving as an idea, considering how much potential there is to overuse resources. In the past, ILL departments everywhere have been unkind to Mother Earth; there are still departments out there that use paper forms for everything. Yet there is a growing interest in using less, not only to save the earth but also because many ILL departments are feeling the economic pressure to cut down and cut back.

For the study, I was asked to describe our current "green" practices. We've taken the typical measures to "green" the department: re-using scrap paper, saving digital files instead of printing, reusing shipping materials (boxes, bubble wrap, etc.), scanning more and photocopying less. Those conducting the study were very interested to hear what we've done so far. They also raised the issue of our shipping practices, something that did not immediately occur to me as a concern for the environment (other than reusing our shipping materials).

So, the study also concerns itself with the "carbon footprint" of our department, the distance our shipments have to travel and how that impacts the environment. To gather this data, I conducted a little study of my own to see how our shipping stats look.

I looked at data for three months (September - November 2009) and here's what I found:

Of the 3,753 packages we shipped in the three-month span,

• 46% of them were sent to the tri-state area (New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut)
• 35% are shipped through METRO Courier (the delivery service administered by the Metropolitan Library Council)
• less than 3% go to Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, or countries overseas

What does this mean? We borrow and lend locally on a very frequent basis; many of our packages don't have to travel far. Nearly half of the books we obtain from other libraries are coming from the tri-state area, resulting in faster service for our patrons and less impact on the environment.

We're starting to think about our "green" practices as extending beyond our paper consumption. The next step is possibly to look at our individual impact on the environment in conjunction with our departmental impact:

• "How come we always seem to run out of plastic water cups when I want a drink? I should really keep a reusable cup at my desk."
  
• "Do I really need a paper bag for my takeout lunch, or can I just carry the container?"
• "What if I just saved my sturdy plastic plate for my one cookie and reused it at the next meeting instead of getting a new plate?"

I wonder if any of you have ever thought about perhaps seemingly unconventional ways to reduce/reuse/recycle in an office environment? Do any of you see a need for a "green" practice in your departments? Is there a workflow or job task that is particularly not "green" and how do you think it could be made more environmentally friendly without sacrificing the quality of work?