I've used circulation information for the reasons cited by many of you - but also as an outreach tool. We've run "contests" for patrons as to guess - for example - how many video items circulated in a given academic quarter - and the closest guess wins a couple of movie passes (predictable - but effective prize). Or what is the title that is checked out most often - all correct guesses are entered to win...yes - movie passes - this one I expect to run this fall.
This sounds trivial on the face - but it is easy to do - and it encourages greater engagement between our patrons and service desk staff. It has also given me the excuse to announce a winner and shout about the startling circulation statistics to a broader audience including library staff who may not view the dvd/blu-ray/vhs collections on an even keel with other collections. The fact that the collection has exponentially greater circulation than any other in the library (particularly given size) is quite an attention grabber! Hmmm... now how do I work in that circ was up nearly 25% last year over the previous year which was also a record breaker? Thanks, Beth Beth Clausen Northwestern University Library -----Original Message----- From: videolib-boun...@lists.berkeley.edu [mailto:videolib-boun...@lists.berkeley.edu] On Behalf Of Ball, James (jmb4aw) Sent: Wednesday, August 17, 2011 6:54 PM To: <videolib@lists.berkeley.edu> Subject: Re: [Videolib] Snapshot of highest used videos I think this year our highest circulating items were Mad Men discs. Last year it was The Wire. Matt ______________________________ Matt Ball Media and Collections Librarian University of Virginia mattb...@virginia.edu 434-924-3812 On Aug 17, 2011, at 5:19 PM, "Deg Farrelly" <deg.farre...@asu.edu> wrote: > An interesting bit of data (I think) > > A couple weeks ago I found myself wondering, for no apparent reason, what our > most used videos are. So I asked our head of Access Services (Circulation) > to run a list for me. From a list of all the videos in all the locations in > ASU Libraries, she generated a list of the top 250 titles by total > circulation. > > The list is all circulation (minus Reserve use) since we changed to a new > online system 15 years ago. It does not differentiate between video formats. > That could be done but we did not do so in this investigation. > > The resulting list does not include Reserve use because it's stored elsewhere > in the system and cannot be extracted by title. Titles with multiple copies > held in different libraries are not aggregated into a single count. So > multiple copies of Still Killing Us Softly (and some other titles) appear > twice on the list. > > But the results are interesting even so. > > Of 250 titles, more than half (60+%) are feature films - 151 > > * The most borrowed title is Still Killing us Softly (419 circs if you > aggregate the copies, 218 for one copy) > * The most borrowed Feature Film: Forest Gump (310) > * The lowest circ of the top 250 titles is 95 uses. > > Anyone else run data like this? > > deg farrelly > Arizona State University > > VIDEOLIB is intended to encourage the broad and lively discussion of issues > relating to the selection, evaluation, acquisition,bibliographic control, > preservation, and use of current and evolving video formats in libraries and > related institutions. It is hoped that the list will serve as an effective > working tool for video librarians, as well as a channel of communication > between libraries,educational institutions, and video producers and > distributors. VIDEOLIB is intended to encourage the broad and lively discussion of issues relating to the selection, evaluation, acquisition,bibliographic control, preservation, and use of current and evolving video formats in libraries and related institutions. It is hoped that the list will serve as an effective working tool for video librarians, as well as a channel of communication between libraries,educational institutions, and video producers and distributors. VIDEOLIB is intended to encourage the broad and lively discussion of issues relating to the selection, evaluation, acquisition,bibliographic control, preservation, and use of current and evolving video formats in libraries and related institutions. It is hoped that the list will serve as an effective working tool for video librarians, as well as a channel of communication between libraries,educational institutions, and video producers and distributors.
