Growth in e-Content loans

The consortium has had a subscription to the Overdrive e-content provider for several years.  Just over a year ago we were able to make the e-Books and e-Audiobooks discoverable through Enterprise - the public access "catalogue" / discovery product.  This increase in accessibility has directly contributed to a significant increase in loans.

Below are two graphs provided through the Overdrive management portal which demonstrate both the growth in loans and also the proportion of loans which are e-Books compared to e-Audiobooks.  This growth in customer usage also supports the consortium's decision to increase its expenditure on e-content as well as choosing a second e-content provider to complement our current Overdrive subscription. We are current tidying up a few loose ends with our new provider and SirsiDynix to ensure that the new content we're about to purchase will also be accessible through Enterprise.  We will have more to say about this when we're ready to launch this second content source.

Compared to some library services, as a consortium we are relatively new to providing loanable e-content & we have not been as aggressive as some in promoting this service.  I was talking to staff at Brisbane City Council libraries at the end of last year & the subject of e-content came up.  They treat their e-content as a separate "branch" in that it is online, and independent from all of their physical libraries; and they tell me that late last year their e-content branch generated more loans than any of the other 30+ physical libraries.  

It will be interesting to keep score of our growth in e-content in coming years, to see when our State-wide "branch" begins to surpass many of our physical libraries. In fact, while I don't have the figures with me, I'd have to think that loans of 35,000+ per month (as seen October - December) is a figure that would challenge many of our branches.  Of course this figure is for all loans right across the State, and many customers who download e-content also borrow physical items, but all the same this is an impressive figure!  I might do some research about the costs per loan from this collection compared to others. 

As this part of our business continues to grow we will need to ensure that we continue to increase our skills and our support for the community as well as finding new ways to promote this collection to new audiences. 

Presenting library statistics

I'm always interested in how library statistics can tell a story about library performance.  Marissa and I are currently building report cards for each library, looking at how they rate against the ALIA Standards and Guidelines.  We hope to release these to each library manager in the next month or so.

While looking at how others have reported library statistics I came across this really interesting blog post which uses a range of technologies to report on visits to UK libraries & how this figure compares to other activities undertaken by the community.  There is the use of infographics, Slideshare (my favourite) and Sway amongst others.  And someone has re-used the approach to display stats about Canadian libraries.  The referencing of sources for the UK data at the bottom of the blog is particularly "librarian" - and great to have so that the authenticity of the data can be verified.

This has given me an idea about both Australian and South Australian library statistics, compared to other community activities.  I'm not sure I'll get around to doing anything in the near future, but it's a mini-project I may come back to at some time. Of course if someone else wants to do the comparative research of community visits to various other events I'd be delighted to publish it here (& of course give credit to the authors and sources of their data). 

As a starting point for Australian library visits, the most recent set of data about public libraries is from 2013/14 & is available here on the NSLA website. This data shows that there were over 112M visits to Australian public libraries that year, which is over 9M per month, or more than 2.1M a week / 300,000 a day.  As Ned Potter's blog says, "So next time someone says libraries are no longer relevant, consider these statistics for a minute (and during that minute 536 people will visit a library."

Collectively, the public libraries of Australia are a powerhouse of community learning and recreation & are obviously very relevant to a significant proportion of our community.  We need to shout this out loud to all who we come across.

Membership numbers & Christmas reading.

Over the last few years I've collected up some professional reading material to take away on leave & have often shared these with you through this blog.  This year I've been so flat out I haven't even had the energy to do this.  However I was delighted to see that the ALIA PD Postings of yesterday included a link to 55 articles every librarian should read.  So I'll be ploughing my way through much of this list in coming days.

There was one article in this list which I did open, because it related to a conversation we've been having in the office about collection management & the overall age, balance and quality of our collective state-wide collections.  You'll be hearing more about this next year as a couple of projects ramp up, but I would point you to this interesting article on Collection management & the art of weeding.

Now regarding library membership, we all know that we've been de-duplicating our customer database as well as deleting some very old unused cards from the system.  This has had quite an impact on our reportable membership numbers.  But at least we know that we're reporting much more accurate numbers than we have in the past.  Our current membership percentage now sits at a a little over 40% of the State's population being active library members.

In the face of this clean up of the database it is interesting to report on the rate of NEW library members who have joined in a period of slightly less than the last 6 months.  PLS staff have run a report on the system which takes into account deletions of memberships and counts the net increase that has occurred over this period.  As the table below indicates, in just under 6 months we have added just over 33,000 new members to the system.  I think this is an amazing jump in membership.

Date		0-14	15-19	20-64	65+	Total
30/06/2015	Library members	78,000	42,254	355,108	136,543	611,905
	New members added from 1/7/15 – 18/12/15	5,316	1,901	20,410	5,578	33,205
18/12/2015	Total	83,316	44,155	375,518	142,121	645,110
2011 Census	SA Population	286,936	103,248	948,837	257,551	1,596,572
18/12/2015	% increase in 6 months	6.80%	4.40%	5.74%	4.08%	5.42%

As 2015 draws to a close I continue to be amazed at what our public library network continues to achieve on behalf of the community.  I look forward to 2016 - anticipating another year where our network of libraries will continue to work together for the best possible outcomes for all our customers.

RFID milestone

Today marks a key milestone for our State-wide Network.  Significant funding from the Libraries Board has brought forward the Network's ability to implement RFID circulation - particularly for all items circulating between libraries.  At the start of this project the Network already had over two million items with chips in them - meaning that we'd passed the 50% mark in RFID tagged items.

Seventy Six library branches which were not RFID enabled prior to this project have purchased an RFID pad & are using the tags supplied by the Board to tag all items as they are shipped out to other libraries.  Tagging items that are being shipped to other libraries is a key efficiency measure for libraries which have already tagged their own collections, and are using a "self check" approach for customers.  Prior to today these libraries had to run two parallel systems for items with chips & those without.  Some libraries chose to place chips into all incoming items, while others ran two checkout systems.  Neither of these solutions were ideal, so it will be a real bonus for these libraries to move away from the need to do this.

These benefits will continue to grow as libraries complete the tagging of their own collections.  This will allow these libraries to move to local RFID circulation if they choose to do so.  

Mount Barker is the 1st library during this project to fully tag their collections, using the loan equipment that we have from our supplier Bibliotheca. And I know that Charles Sturt isn't far behind. There are ten other libraries using this loan equipment to speed up their tagging process.  This equipment will move on to other libraries as per the schedule that James Kemperman has published.

We're aware that a significant number of libraries are well ahead on their tagging schedule, which is great news for the network.

Obviously there are some items currently in transit between libraries which aren't tagged, so I would expect that libraries will continue to receive untagged items for a week or two.

Great new Pew Research Centre report on public libraries in the US

Many of you may know about and have ready previous Pew Research Centre's reports on public libraries in the US.  A new report called Libraries at the crossroads has just appeared & I think it has some interesting readying for all of us.  Of course it is about the US, but I believe that there are sufficient parallels for us to take note.

Part of the work of this report has been to survey people about what they think their libraries should be doing.  While we're not 100% customer driven, and have a responsibility to exercise professional leadership we should certainly take note of customer expectations.  So in the US the four key things many American say they want their public library to do are:

• "support local education;
• serve special constituents such as veterans, active-duty military personnel and immigrants;
• help local businesses, job seekers and those upgrading their work skills;
• embrace new technologies such as 3-D printers and provide services to help patrons learn about high-tech gadgetry."

While there are some cultural differences between Australia and the US I think that our communities' lists would broadly be much the same. 

So, how are we going at actively and consciously supporting local education?  Do our library staff have close connections with local schools?  How well do we understand the current Australian Curriculum & how has it influenced our collection development strategies?  How well are we connected with minority and potentially disadvantaged groups?  How are their needs factored into our service delivery planning?  And where is each library with its connections to local business, and to those seeking to improve their employment and employability prospects?  Are these issues driving our service delivery planning?  And yes - we're all in love with the new technology - which is great.  But providing access to it needs to occur within a deliberate skills and digital literacy agenda.

I really love the chart / column graphs which measure customer reactions to 10 key aspects of library planning, from free early literacy programs to moving collections out of the way to free up space for reading rooms and cultural events.  It is interesting to see how many (but not all) of these 10 hot button issues relate to our recently released State-wide strategic plan for libraries called Tomorrow's Libraries: Future directions of the South Australian Public Library Network. 

Two of the three top things that people want relate to teaching early literacy (97% say libraries should definitely or maybe do) and digital literacy  (96%) with the other issue being the links to schools & providing resources for this purpose (94%).

One apparent conundrum is that having more comfortable spaces for reading, working and relaxing scores 85% while 70% of people are concerned about moving print books out of public locations to free up space to provide these people spaces. 

I think that for many of us this has become a false dichotomy where we have been prepared to sacrifice collection size to create the spaces for people.  Have we have ducked the more difficult and costly challenge of actually increasing our library sizes to meet the new demands of our community?  Have we have cannibalised our longer term core value of information (in books and other media) to embrace our newer core service of providing increased people spaces?

Having had the benefit of visiting libraries across Australia and in many countries I can see that relative to many other places South Australia's public libraries are on the whole much smaller than elsewhere.  And I can see the trade off between collection sizes and people spaces in some of the statistics for our libraries - where quite a few larger libraries have collection sizes well below the ALIA recommended public library standards and guidelines, and quite a few libraries are below the size they should be as per the State Library of New South Wales People Places guidelines.

So, it is great to see research being done in other countries, which probably has quite a bit of relevance for us.  In the absence of any definitive local data it can certainly be used as one information source as we continue to plan for the ongoing revolution which we're currently undergoing.  Take a look at the Pew report, make a comment & also please share any other interesting professional literature which is shaping your thinking at present.

New consortia continue to appear

I heard from one of our suppliers the other day that Wales has joined the "consortium" world, but agreeing to develop a whole of Wales one card system - similar to South Australia.  This has been confirmed by an article here.

I have been impressed with lots that the Welsh have been doing about performance measurement for libraries & so am not surprised that they are also pushing ahead in terms of making their libraries more accessible for their communities.  And it is interesting to note that they have been prepared to quantify the level of savings they expect around the operations of the Library Management Systems.

The announcement follows on from Ireland also pursuing a whole of nation library consortium.  It is not surprising that libraries are heading down this path, because we've always been committed to maximising customer access to information & now the technology  (both LMS and telecommunications) is allowing us to do it more easily & to save money as we go!

And given my recent visit to China, there may be some more action there at some stage in the future.  I will say more about this in the near future.

All of this has got me thinking that perhaps we should start some form of online forum for developing consortia so that we can learn from each other.  Given that Wales has chosen the same software company as we have (SirsiDynix) I can see that there would be some specific ways in which we could assist them in understanding the pluses & minuses of various configurations on the software etc.

Further planning work on the new Acquisitions module

Many of you know that PLS has been actively working with SirsiDynix to develop a new web based acquisitions module.  Its more than just acquisitions tho' - it will include all of the functionality of our current selection software, as well as provide additional functionality and features we don't have at present.  We're really excited by all that this project will deliver for our network & we're also excited by our progress to date.  I have to say a huge "thank you" to SirsiDynix the company & their development team who've taken on this project!!

While I have made passing references to this project on this blog I have been reluctant to publish too much information as much of what we are co-designing with SirsiDynix is a new product which is commercially sensitive.  However I do want to pay tribute to the professionalism of the SirsiDynix team and to update you on the work we've been doing with them.

As I mentioned elsewhere 3 SirsiDynix staff spent a week in Adelaide in January, locked in the PLS meeting room with a group of our staff doing detailed scoping work on a "better than P2" product.  They also visited libraries and one of our suppliers as well as meeting with relevant key library staff.  

Since then PLS staff have been involved in weekly teleconferences with the developers in Utah as they work to turn the ideas into functional software.  What we've seen to date has been great & we've demonstrated a few screens at the recent SirsiDynix product tour of Australia. 

As it was time to completely "unpack" more of the detailed functionality of the software, three PLS staff have just spent a week in the SirsiDynix offices, working with their staff to document functionality and software design.  It was a really exciting but tiring week as we had to track through all elements of our current system, eliminate bits that don't work as we want and take into account changes in technology since we built "P2".  Of equal importance has been ensuring that the software will meet the needs of all libraries, not just ours.  We became familiar with the fact that Montreal has 4 different taxes that apply to the purchase of books & that any system will need to track all 4 tax streams.  And some library consortia actually work across national boundaries, so need to work simultaneously in multiple currencies - and so on!!

Below are a few pictures of our week's work.

The picture above shows something that a PLS staff member said looked like Tetris - an old computer game.  It actually comes from the software development techniques being used by SirsiDynix which is "Agile."  And the team told us that what we were doing was "epic grooming".  Its interesting to see how normal English words get used so differently by the computer world!  Effectively we were taking large "stories" - i.e. the complete ordering process or receiving process, and breaking them down to their component parts, and being very specific about who does what & in what order, as well as documenting all the dependencies and contingencies that attach to each stage.

We used the frosting on the glass to also delineate what we needed to be in place by "day one"- i.e. when the software goes live, and then what is needed, but not necessary from day one.  We also documented some "nice to have" features that will come later.  the coloured tags attached to the sticky notes towards to bottom of the board indicate features that need to be delivered in a sequence after we go live.

The picture below is one that PLS staff member Tricia Knightly took - a bit of an artistic take of the wall.  From the closest couple of sticky labels you can see the sorts of details we were working on. 

Interestingly, the use of the sticky notes was crucial as we debated whether items were essential on day one or needed shortly thereafter.  I recall one sticky note getting moved 4 times as we debated the process.

The good thing about being in the SirsiDynix offices is that all of the development team could drop in from time to time to contribute to the process and to here our rationale for doing things a certain way.  Below is a photo of the development team, along with the PLS staff who were there.  There are a couple of other people including a senior engineer Mark & a user experience designer Jared who are part time contributors to the project who weren't there at the end of the week when we took this shot.  Mark & Jared work on other projects as well as this one.

The "product owner" - or team leader is Mike Hilmo, who is doing a sensational job in driving the project forward & translating our needs into software!  Mike is standing to the left of Jo Freeman as you look at this picture.  And just to use another Agile term which is a bit weird, Marcie - who is standing in front of Tricia Knightly is the team's "scrum master".

The next stage of the project is that the team will calculate the amount of effort it will take to complete all of these epics, and then we should have a much firmer sense of when "go live" will be.  We should know this information within a month.  At this stage we're going for software completion by June/July next year, with time for refinement & training to follow, and then looking at the 1st selection list being on the new system well before the year is out. 

We believe that we should have enough functionality completed by the November PLSA quarterly meeting to give library staff a pretty good walk through what will be in place by then.  We'll also keep you posted on this blog and elsewhere as things progress.