By Barb Kopshina

In November of 2011, a subgroup for the Access Services Council was formed with the charge of “Reviewing Statistics Collected by Campus Library Locations for Resource Sharing Activity.” Many campus library locations were keeping a wide variety of statistics. Some of these statistics were outdated, while others were being recorded manually when they could have been pulled from library web-based systems. Our group’s goal was to reduce the collection of redundant or unnecessary statistics and to educate fellow library faculty and staff about current best practices related to this issue.

Our group’s first task was to gather a snapshot of each member’s library location to see how statistics were being kept. After gathering this information, a spreadsheet was created and data was sorted. Alan Shay, Data Analyst for University Libraries, was essential in assisting us with this process as he provided our group with a list of statistics currently being collected by University Libraries for outside organizations such as ARL. We discovered that a lot of the information collected by campus locations is no longer being reported outside of University Libraries. As a result of our collaboration with Alan, the Libraries online Monthly Stats Database was eliminated.

Our group is now working to create a training bulletin to help streamline the statistics collection process by providing straightforward information on various library systems including Desk Tracker, Digital Measures, Director’s Station, and Labman.

For questions or more information, contact the Reviewing Statistics subgroup:
Laura Ax-Fultz
Barb Kopshina
Mary Fran McLaughlin
Lisa Moyer