Just a follow up to Peter Hebdon's posting and summary on this topic.

Despite the thoughtful responses provided, the overall low response to this
thread has been a bit disappointing and as a result the conclusions drawn
about current use of rotation or its effectiveness, may not reflect a
completely accurate picture.

In order to promote smartsm (the new stock management service from Bridgeall
Libraries), I held a series of stock management seminars during 2006-07
which were attended by representatives from over 100 local authorities. One
thing that came across clearly was the CONTINUING WIDESPREAD USE of mass
stock rotation.

In the seminars, I introduced  evidence that mass movement of ‘formula
fiction’ using limited rotas, produced huge savings in acquisition costs in
West Lothian Libraries.  In the early 1990’s I was able to cut West Lothian’
s standing orders for this sort of material by 50% and at the same time the
material purchased was used approximately twice as often as it was before
mass movement was instigated (using our new EBSM methodology we were now
able to measure this accurately). EBSM also provided evidence of additional
use for underused non fiction after it was re-located.  Quite clearly,
library users like to experience continuous stock refreshment and they
respond accordingly.

The real problem with mass rotation is that, although it is effective at
moving stock, and it provides the stock refreshment which users like, it is
a crude and random process and the software provided does not lend itself to
analysis of the effectiveness of the process.

Like Leeds City Libraries, West Lothian embraced mass stock rotation for
many years because of the early success noted above.  However in 1997 I
became aware of a potential problem with mass movement of popular fiction
and this alert came from an unexpected source.

I conducted a 'new borrower' survey in 1997.  The idea was to ask people
joining the library what their expectations, as new users, were.  We
followed up about 9 months later to see to what extent these expectations
had been met - a very useful and powerful way of finding out what users
think about the service!
One notable discovery was that readers of popular fiction love to work their
way through the back list of all titles of any author they have recently
come across.  A significant percentage of these readers indicated that had
suffered frustration on many of their library visits, because they
consistently failed to find a reasonable selection of titles by these
favourite authors.
The frustration was strongly expressed by our survey respondents to the
extent that we even identified that some 'new' borrowers had already stopped
using the library altogether!

Investigation showed that this problem was worsened by the effects of mass
rotation of fiction.  It became obvious that we were moving stock which was
currently being well used and in great demand, out of some service points,
and blindly transferring it to other service points where it just sat on the
shelves doing nothing. This is clearly bad for customer satisfaction and
provides poor ‘Best Value from expensive stock. There is no doubt in my mind
that this is an inevitable consequence of ‘dumb’ stock rotation.
I have serious reservations about the ‘Dynamic stock’ concept too, since the
relocation produced by this concept is inevitably equally random and pays no
heed to local needs.

 It was for this reason that, when I started to work with Bridgeall
Libraries,  I was keen that we should develop reports within smartsm, which
effectively help to produce 'intelligent’ stock movement by matching supply
and demand between service points,  for fiction and non fiction.  This
process improves customer satisfaction and produces much improved ‘Best
Value’ from existing stock.

I believe there is still a strong case for mass rotation for specific
collections like 'formula fiction’ and new non fiction acquisitions.  For
the rest, my mantra would be “Move low use stock to matching high demand
locations but NEVER the other way round”.
If you are interested to find out how we do this, link to our web site
www.bridgeallsmartsm.com and find out how to arrange a demonstration of the
smartsm package.

George Kerr
Library Consultant
Bridgeall Libraries Ltd.
Tel 01506 412470