Library Loan Activity Continues to Grow

Library loan activity increased by nearly 10% last year compared with 1993/94, and the total number of loans is now in the order of 700,000. The biggest increase was at Beckett Park, where loans increased by more than 18% to over a quarter of a million. More modest increases of 6% and 2% were experienced at Calverley Street and Brunswick respectively.

The increase has occurred despite the fact that student numbers have remained stable. This suggests that changes in teaching and learning methods are impacting on library use.

Loan activity has more than doubled over the last five years, with the largest percentage increases occurring at Beckett Park The chart Library Loans 1989-1995 (top left) demonstrates the steady growth in library borrowing over the last five years at the three site libraries.

Which Students Borrow from the Library?

An analysis of library loan data for 1994/5 shows that students from the Faculty of Cultural and Education Studies accounted for the largest proportion of loans from the Library. Their borrowing represents almost 30% of all library loan transactions by students (see chart centre left).

The extent to which students from Cultural and Educational Studies dominate library borrowing activity cannot entirely be accounted for by the large size of the faculty. When loans per FTE student are considered, students from CES still come out strongly at 50 loans for each FTE student. However, the heaviest users of the library are students from the Faculty of Health and Social Care — they manage to account for an astonishing 60 loans per FTE student over the year. (See chart, bottom left.)

This, however, represents a drop of almost 10% in library borrowing by Health and Social Care students from when the analysis was previously conducted in 1992/3. In comparison, borrowing by students in other faculties has risen sharply over the last two years: Faculty of Business (up 15%) and Faculty of Information and Engineering Systems (up 12%).

CD-ROM Services

The popularity of the Library’s CD-ROM services as a means of quickly accessing information continues. During the last academic year, more than 100,000 searches were carried out — a level of usage that few would have predicted when the service was launched only a few years ago.

Most of the Library’s heavily used CD-ROMs are now mounted on a network, making them available from all site libraries, IT Suites, and suitably connected staff PCs. Looking at this group of CD-ROMs alone, we currently have 11 that are typically used more than 400 times in any term-time month.

The most heavily-used CD-ROM is The Guardian newspaper which, during 1994/95, was accessed over 10,000 times. The Guardian, along with the other newspapers that we offer, are by far the most popular type of CD-ROM. Last year, newspapers accounted for over 40% of all searches, despite numbering only 5 out of the 26 currently networked CDROMs (see charts top and centre right).

Although many of the CD-ROMs that the Library subscribes to are very expensive, they are becoming increasingly good value. By carefully selecting which CD-ROMs to take (out of the thousands that are available), and maximizing access to them by continually expanding the network, the unit cost is now very reasonable. This cost, which is the total cost to the Library for all networked CD-ROMs divided by total accesses, has decreased over the last 3 years by over 50% (see chart, bottom right). Although direct comparisons are not possible, the current figure of 44p per search probably compares very favourably with many of our traditional printed secondary sources.

If you would like to know more about the CD-ROM service, please speak to your Tutor Librarian.