Inter-Library Loan / transit rate fulfilment

As you're aware, part of the PLS team is still in "implementation mode" for the One Card project, however we're also interested in doing some data analysis of how the consortium is performing.  While we haven't had a great amount of time and resources to do this work, some recent analysis of the rate of "hold fulfilment" has been undertaken.  The work was initiated as part of the project which is evaluating how well the project is fulfilling the original business case for the project.  However given the various anecdotes and perceptions around this topic I thought it was useful data to share.  We're still learning how to both gather and then interpret the data that we are getting out of Director's Station, but believe that the information below is accurate.

PLS staff looked at the holds filled and not filled over a 6 month period from October 2013 to March 2014 inclusive.  During this period over 390,000 holds were fulfilled or remained unfilled. 

The graph below shows the "fill rate" for these requests.  It shows us that while only 17% of requests were filled in the 1st month,  44% of requests were filled within 2 months, 67% were filled within 3 months & 85% were filled within 4 months.  These figures will change from time to time, but this 1st set of measures gives us a starting point from which to measure our performance.

 

From my experience in libraries, being able to fill 67% of all requests within 3 months is a very high success rate. It also gives us some preliminary information when talking to customers about the sorts of waiting times that they can expect - on average at least.  

 

 

 We will continue to run these reports from time to time & provide updates on this and other areas of the consortium's performance as we have such information to report.

 

De-duplication continues to deliver benefits

As anyone using the system will know, the issue of duplicate bibliographic records continues to be one of our biggest hurdles to efficiency, in terms of searching for items in specific libraries, managing "holds," the number of items in transit, cataloguing to the correct bib records and other areas.  Some libraries are performing manual "transferring" - i.e. resolving these duplicate records, which is to the benefit of all who use the system.

To attempt to speed up this process we engaged SirsiDynix to run a de-duplication script across the database over Easter, with the intent to merge as many bibliographic records as we could find exact match points for. The script has managed to merge over 20,000 records, which is a great outcome.  

The process also identified a further 1,300 records which could be merged, however they have items with the status of "in transit" which stops the merge happening.  Therefore the script will continue to be run a number of times over the next week or so with the intent of resolving these items as their status changes from "in transit".

We will continue to run de-duplication scripts from time to time, however there are a significant number of records on the system which cannot be resolved using automated scripting.  Therefore we will need to use a concerted approach of staff fixing these intractable records.

PLS will be working with the LMS User Group to identify an equitable way of assigning this transferring work, with the aim of having a much cleaner database in the coming months.  We will keep you posted as to how this progresses.

Tumby Bay goes live

The Tumby Bay School Community Library went live On Thursday last week (10 April), just in time for the School Holidays.  I have held off posting about the library until some photos of the day came through.

The Library's Enterprise site is here.  

The LMS project office is marking this addition to the consortium as it completes the rollout of the network to all libraries on the Eyre Peninsula.

Fran Oswald, the library's teacher librarian sent me the following message about the project: 

Here at Tumby Bay we are all extremely excited to finally go live and join the consortium.

I would like to thank my two staff members Kerrie and Jane for their hard work (especially while I was holidaying for three weeks in South Africa prior to our go live date.) A HUGE thankyou must go to Sue and the team at PLS for all their help and guidance during this busy time.

 

Fran has also provided us with a few photos of the day - with a combination of eager public and school customers happy to test the system and enjoy the library's hospitality. 



Local public customers - the 1st to use the system,
with library staff Kerry and Jane in the background

School students learning about the new system before joining the festivities

They tell us that the principal was blown away by the system

Students enjoying the cupcakes galore as part of the celebration

 

Franklin Harbour goes live

Where is Franklin Harbour I hear you ask.  It is the name of the council which includes the town of Cowell on the Eyre Peninsula where there is a School Community Library. The library joined the consortium on Thursday last week (3 April) but we've held off publicising it as I've waited to get some photos of both Thursday and Friday at the library. 

The "go live" on Thursday was followed by a "twilight day" at the school on Friday.  The school opened at noon and stayed open into the evening to provide parents & the wider community an opportunity to attend and view all of the school's activities.  This provided a perfect opportunity for the Mayor to do an official launch of Cowell joining the rapidly expanding consortium.

Library staff tell me that they slept well on the weekend after the huge amount of work it took their small team to get their library onto the consortium.

The Enterprise site for the library can be found here.

We are now just waiting for Tumby Bay to join & that will mean that all of the Eyre Peninsula will be consortium participants.

Below are a few photos of Thursday & Friday at Cowell.

Staff at Cowell checking out items on the new system

 

Students using Enterprise for the 1st time



The library is the place to be for young parents

Whyalla joins the party

Whyalla joined the One Card consortium today.  With a population of over 21,000 people Whyalla is South Australia's 2nd largest rural city.  Participation in the consortium complements the city's nearly new (opened in 2012) purpose-built public library in providing a modern, connected library service for the community.

Library staff have designed their Enterprise site to reflect the Council's website - in terms of colours & font etc.  And as the council site contains lots of information about library services Enterprise links directly to this existing information.

As an aside it is interesting to see that the Library now runs a Council customer service counter from 12 - 5 Monday to Friday.  At this service point residents can undertake a number of council related transactions.

Catherine McIntyre - library manager at Whyalla has sent us through a couple of photos from their very busy day. I love the library staff members' T-shirts!




Coral Dyason, Catherine McIntyre, Jim Pollock (City of Whyalla Mayor),

Janet Ashman & Migelle Hiscock (Whyalla Council Group Manager Community)



Karen Gruenwald “on loan” from Port Augusta Library, Naomi Haldane & Lynette Steele

 

We've managed to get Benedict the knitted boyfriend amongst the cupcakes,
however the photo of him flying - attached to a One Card balloon is still misbehaving

 

Stats aren't everything, but...

With Port Lincoln joining the consortium last week we've passed the 1M borrower mark.  The exact number is 1,000,690. 
 
Of course we have quite a few borrowers in the system with more than 1 card, so they're being counted twice or more in this number. It will be interesting to see what the figure will be when the borrower numbers peak before we do some serious de-duplication of customer cards.  Our eventual goal will be 1 borrowing card per person & then we'll have an accurate State-wide count of borrowers - for the 1st time ever. It will be interesting to compare this final number to previous reports of borrower numbers.
 
Our "item numbers" are accurate & they stand at 3,741,425 items on the database to-date. This is likely to rise to be just over 3.8M items.

Port Lincoln joins the consortium

One of South Australia's larger rural cities - Port Lincoln (population 14,000) - joined the One Card consortium, last week, going live on Thursday.  The library celebrated with a morning tea for the community, free book prizes and staff on hand to assist customers using the new system.  They also had the mayor along who made a speech for the event.

The library took the opportunity to issue new library cards, which contains a beautiful image of the bay that Pt Lincoln is situated on.  The photo was taken by the late Councillor and professional photographer Jill Parker. This is the image which is now on the library's Enterprise site - see the link below.

The local newspaper the Port Lincoln Times attended the event & captured a few photos, some of which is shown below.  The Port Lincoln Times has now published a great article about the library joining the One Card network

The Port Lincoln library is based at the site of the local TAFE College. While it was a joint use library for many years, the library has fairly recently changed its arrangements so that it is a public library which supports all in the community but is no longer formally providing services to TAFE. 

The library's Enterprise site uses the Council's blue & yellow colour scheme to good effect and links to so many relevant services, databases and libraries. It also links back to the council's website where the library's e-newsletter is housed.

The local newspaper photographer Laura Cook lining up (from the right)
Library Manager, Louise Mrdjen Mayor Bruce Green,
Deputy CEO Katrina Allen & Manager Community Development Janet Grocke

Sue Heath joins Louise & Bruce to cut the cake



Library staff Helen and Sue showing the new library cards

Most libraries are really fortunate to have dedicated volunteers &
one of Pt Lincoln's great supporters Janet was on hand for the launch.