Hi James,
For me it's important to have a use for the statistics collected - there is no point in collecting figures just because they are interesting. The purpose may be to inform decision-making (e.g. cost per use of journal subscriptions helps to ensure value for money) or for promotional purposes (I am always being asked how many ebooks we have!). Then you have the SCONUL questionnaire which allows us to compare ourselves against other institutions on a raft of different measures and also against previous years for our own institution: you see how the service is changing and where we are falling behind our competitors.
The most useful ones for me are:
E-resource usage statistics, particularly JR1 for cost per download calculations (which informs cancellation/renewal decisions) and BR3 for ebook turnaways (which allows us to take reasonably quick action if we see heavy usage of certain titles).
Turnstile entry/exit figures. These are very useful for showing which times of year, which days of the week, and which times of day are busiest. This informs opening times and staffing levels, and gives us evidence when we introduce a new period of 24/7 opening, for example.
Kind regards,
Leon Perry
Data Manager
University of Portsmouth
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