Budget Numbers, Circulation Numbers, Programming Numbers, I Haz Them ALL (part 3)

The Statistics Octopus
It's a Thing

In the past, I've used the circulation numbers to divide up the money for the coming year. This year is going to be...different. I am spending a big chunk on replacements, as the final part of the Neighborhoods project. I will be spending a lot on easy readers and nonfiction, as those areas are next on the list. I gave a larger chunk to our cataloger, who purchases YA (partly because I messed up the budget last year and she lost money). Juvenile will be mainly keeping up with series.

I also have some additional numbers this year, since I decided to track size of collection, as well as circulation, to see how weeding was affecting the collection size. As far as I have been able to figure out, the library's collection was not weeded in its first 100 years of existence, prior to major budget issues, and a big staff turnover. We have a lot of back weeding to do now and I have been weeding diligently over the past 6 years. However, we also have to maintain collection size. I'm a slash and burn weeder (-:) and need to make sure I don't get out of hand. So, these numbers will help me see which areas are getting low.

(if you are anal enough to check my math, total circulation won't match the numbers because it includes holds from other libraries)

Total Circulation: 120,934
Increase from 2013: 3,787

Circulation by area

• Juvenile audiobooks: 582
• Increase of 58. I requested additional funds to purchase more audiobooks this year.
• Book + CD (easy): 208
• Increase of 26. I purchased a chunk of these at the end of the year and not all are cataloged yet, as we're waiting for the bags they go in.
• Juvenile Blu-Ray: 1283
• Increase of 467. I still don't think these are popular enough to devote a significant amount of budget. I try to get the feature films in the double packs, which we separate.
• Board Books: 4513
• Increase of 443. I would like to do a major overhaul of this section and replace all the tired and worn books, but I think that will have to be a project for 2016.
• Juvenile CDs: 412
• I would actually estimate this circulation at about 800. In June, our cataloger set up a separate location for the CDs. Until then, their circulation was included in with dvds. We had hoped that would separate out the historic stats as well, but it didn't. So this is starting from June.
• Children's (DVDs): 27,474
• Increase of 350. Are dvds a thing of the past or have we just reached maximum circ? I would guess the latter.
• Easy (readers): 9700
• Increase of 790. My next project in collection development is to sort out the nonfiction in the easy readers, give them to my poor, long-suffering cataloger to recatalog and relabel, and fill in series. I'm also planning to replace a lot of very, very grungy-looking titles. However, my purchasing here is finite since the easy reader shelves are almost full.
• Juvenile Fiction: 14120
• This section is confusing because this year I combined juvenile graphics and a large portion of the series into juvenile fiction and then made a separate location for new juvenile. Last year the combined juvenile sections circulated a total of 20,989. The combined total this year was 19,114. So this section was actually down 1875. It took a while for people to find where the series and graphic novels had moved to, the series especially are no longer right out in front by the easy readers. I added better signage during the summer and that helped, but it will just take people a while to find things I think. I tried magnetic labels on shelves, but they keep falling off - I think maybe laminated characters and sticking them to the shelves might be better. I also bought less in this area due to spending on replacements and Neighborhoods and that's not going to change next year so this section may just move a little slower for a while. I have to remind myself that it's ok if circulation drops in one area for a while, since it's up overall. You can't give everything an absolutely optimal spot.
• New Juvenile Fiction: 2100
• Juvenile Series: 2894
• Juvenile Holiday: 1491
• Increase of 228
• Juvenile Magazines: 224
• Dropped 127. The circulation time for magazines was changed to one week and I think this had a negative impact on circ. However, I had nothing to do with that change. Out of my hands!
• Juvenile Nonfiction: 8990
• Down by 225. Not unexpected as I did not buy a lot here and moved a lot of very popular titles to the picture book neighborhoods.
• Oversized: 62
• Up by 8. I'm still getting rid of this collection - it's really just the Star Wars books.
• Parenting: 191
• Down by 198. That's because I moved all the potty training books to the neighborhoods.
• Picture Books: 27,214
• Increase of 4885. A portion of that is the concept books that were moved in (about 1,000 in circ) and the easy nonfiction added. A small portion is also the number that were checked out to the youth services card during the process. I'd say that at least 3,000 is increase though!
• Spanish: 237
• Down by 165. There's no real way to predict this collection - just depends what family is teaching their kids Spanish or if kids happen upon it or....something.
• Circulating Toys: 639
• Increased by 257. I added a lot of new toys and it paid off.
• Video Games: 2975
• Increased by 463. I added PS3 and XBOX360 this year. We're running out of space for this collection - might want to increase the limit to 4 or 5, at least for Wii games, but that could be confusing.
• Young Adult Magazines: 272
• Up by 9. Meh. This is really a browsing, not a circulating collection.
• Young Adult Graphic Novels: 1925
• This was down by 587, very disappointing. However, I got behind in a lot of manga series and I think this is something you have to buy pretty constantly - the teens don't re-read manga as much as some other collections, especially if you have a small collection. Moving the teen area downstairs may have affected this as well - it brought more readers to check out fiction, but I think a lot of the teens who browsed manga are gone. This year I'm going to preorder all the new releases in the popular series.
• Young Adult Fiction: 5714
• Increase of 572. Our cataloger took over this collection this year and she made some good choices, also moving it downstairs meant more adults found the collection.

Collection size
Overall, our collection increased by 1,136 to a total collection size of 22,817

Picture books increased by 405 for a total collection of 4,491. This is really amazing, considering how many I weeded due to condition for which the replacements have not yet arrived. I also pulled a lot over from the nonfiction section and purchased heavily in this area as well. I plan to use these numbers to justify the two shelves of books I want to discard as I finish Neighborhoods.

Easy readers are slated to be next on the weeding/replacement list. They increased by 119 for a total collection of 1,165 which is almost at full capacity for our shelves.

Board books increased by 74 for a collection of 566. I'm very proud of my board book collection, which parents love, but it needs refreshing.

Juvenile fiction is confusing because of the way the collections were moved around. Series dropped 524 to a total of 597, the graphic novel location was completely removed and a new juvenile fiction section added, which currently has 182 but fluctuates since this collection is added to the general juvenile fiction location. This location increased by 572 to a total of 3843, which is basically adding the juvenile series. I also weeded the juvenile fiction. So, total juvenile fiction collections are at 4,622 which is an increase of 230.

Juvenile nonfiction dropped 121 to only 5,459. I did not buy much in this area this year and moved several hundred titles to the Neighborhoods. I plan to buy extensively here, possibly this year, but more likely next year.

Media: I was surprised that our juvenile dvds were down 14 for a total collection of 1,837. We've been having some space issues and I bought a ton but I also deleted second copies and I guess we lost more than I thought due to theft/damage. We added 13 more bluray for a total collection of 92, but most patrons don't have bluray players and I only buy them for feature films. I only added 5 juvenile audiobooks, bringing the collection up to 230. I'd like to add more but we have a space issue. I did purchase more book & cd combos, but the numbers only show us going up 4 to 59 because we are waiting for the bags to put them in. I added the separate location for juvenile music cds this year, so I don't have previous numbers to compare. We have 219 and no more space!

I added 7 toys to increase the collection to 54. I thought I'd added more than that, but then remembered that I'd weeded some of the really ancient stuff that predated me.

The video game collection increased by 76 to 213. This was hugely popular when we started it and still circulates well, but I am indecisive now as to whether I should start buying the (very expensive) new game formats, increase the checkout limits from 2 or...?

Young adult graphics only increased by 84 to a total collection of 718, which is probably why the circulation dropped, among other reasons.

Our holiday collection dropped by 4 to 645, which is about right - I would like to add a few more Valentines, Halloween and Thanksgiving books but 700 is the limit for what I can store on the holiday shelves I think.

Oversized dropped 32 to 71 - I am in the process of getting rid of this collection completely.

I was surprised parenting only dropped 1, to 109, even though I moved all the potty books. But I added a handful as well. I plan to increase this collection but it's not a high priority.

I added 3 Spanish books and we have 251 now. This whole collection needs to be relabeled but it's a low priority.