Market Your School Library Program with Statistics

USD #233 Summer Conference

Lori Franklin, LMS

Olathe East High School

Hate Math? Research studies show that large proportions

of librarians tend to come from the education, social studies and language arts fields.1

Library schools do not typically teach statistics.

Current research being published appears in both quantitative and qualitative formats (including hybrid studies).

1 Dilevko, J. (2007). Inferential statistics and librarianship. Library & Information Science Research, 29(2), 209-229.

Ever served on BLT? You probably know more about statistics than

you realize. Extracting “highlights” from assessment data

is one example. Daily, you informally observe many

occurrences that can be statistically related to managing the library program.

How about Gateway stats? You check books in and out all year long. Ever wonder if your fiction circulation figures

are increasing or decreasing over a span of time?

A downward change in these figures might indicate that you need to rethink selection strategies.

Use ** and the appropriate

dates

P

This is a LM 710 report

LM 710 Provides you with powerful data. How can you present it succinctly to your

principal, staff members and community members?

Excel!

You can copy and paste your pie chart into MS Word and Publisher when you are creating an annual report.

2007-2008

1337

1447

229

Fiction

Non-Fiction

Easy

Add even more power… Compare your circulation figures across a

range of years to determine trends. You may see that Fiction is decreasing and

non-fiction is increasing. Do you need to re-examine your fiction

selection strategies or pump even more dollars into non-fiction?

Note that your data will appear in proper context if you use the earliest year first when creating your Excel workbook…

Before building your chart, highlight the data you want to show.

Right click on your chart and choose: Format Chart Area to create a border, change chart colors and make other visual changes for ease of reading.

Visuals powerfully speak…

Fiction, Non-Fiction and Total Circulation 2004-2008

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

4000

2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007 2007-2008

Fiction

Non-Fiction

Total Circulation

Did you see the trends? In 2004-2006 circulation of

fiction and non-fiction were fairly similar.

An upward trend in fiction circulation began in 2005 and has carried through to 2008.

This reflects a change in reading requirements for our Language Arts department.

Fiction, Non-Fiction and Total Circulation 2004-2008

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

4000

2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007 2007-2008

Fiction

Non-Fiction

Total Circulation

Additionally… Non-fiction circulation

grew more than fiction circulation during the same time frame.

Why? We purchased more non-

fiction and used library celebrations, display tactics and word-of-mouth to promote checkout in an effort to reach male students.

Fiction, Non-Fiction and Total Circulation 2004-2008

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

4000

2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007 2007-2008

Fiction

Non-Fiction

Total Circulation

Other ways to showcase data… Your budget Show trends in funding Show trends in spending – where are you

allocating your dollars? Separate capital outlay spending from the

regular library budget line items Tie funding to increased circulation needs!

A pie chart is another way to visualize a budget to see where you are spending dollars, such as seeing which piece of the pie is the largest. Here, it is easy to see that a large chunk of the budget has been spent on print and electronic materials.

Before building your chart, highlight the data you want to show. Here, because we are using a pie chart, we have highlighted data for one year. Column charts, bar graphs or line charts are a better choice for comparison across years.

0 5,000 10,000 15,000 20,000

Print Materials

Electronic materials

Technology

Supplies

Misc.

Repair

2007-2008

2006-2007

2005-2006

2004-2005

Total Budget

27,945

35,335

41,68046,500

0

10,000

20,000

30,000

40,000

50,000

1 2 3 4

Total Budget

What about classes you teach? Keeping statistics on how many class visit

occur in your library is a great way to let your principal and faculty learn about how vital your program is for the entire school.

If you don’t get the word out, people are not going to know what is happening…

Which is more powerful? “We had a lot of class visits this year.” Concise and specific data showing exactly

which faculty are utilizing your facility, and in what ways you are providing support (direct group instruction, one-on-one help, computer usage, booktalks, etc.).

Class Visits

Excel Pivot Table also does this…ACT PLAN

ADV. PSYCHOLOGY

AM GOVT.

AM HISTORY

AM. GOVT

AMERICAN GOVT.

AP AMERICAN GOVT.

AP AMERICAN HIS.

AP English III

ART-PHOTOGRAPHY

ART-SCULPTURE

BIOLOGY

BUSINESS

CAREER & LIFE PLAN

CAREERS

CAREERS & LIFE PLAN

CHEMISTRY

COLLEGE READ.

CP ENGLISH IV

DEBATE

DRAMA

DRAMA

ENGLISH III

ENROLLMET

FASHION

FRENCH

GEOGRAPHY

GERMAN

HEALTH

INTERNAT'L ARTS/CUL

INTERNAT'L CULTURES

MATH

PE

QUEST

READ 180

SCIENCE

SCIENCE--A&P

SCIENCE--PSI

SIGN LANGUAGE

SOCIOLOGY

SOPH ENGLISH

SPANISH II

SPED

STUD. NATURALIST

TAPS

WORLD HISTORY

ENGLISH III

ENROLLMET

FASHION

FRENCH

GEOGRAPHY

GERMAN

HEALTH

INTERNAT'L ARTS/CUL

INTERNAT'L CULTURES

MATH

PE

QUEST

READ 180

SCIENCE

SCIENCE--A&P

SCIENCE--PSI

SIGN LANGUAGE

SOCIOLOGY

SOPH ENGLISH

SPANISH II

SPED

STUD. NATURALIST

TAPS

WORLD HISTORY

DRAMA

ENGLISH III

ENROLLMET

FASHION

FRENCH

GEOGRAPHY

GERMAN

HEALTH

INTERNAT'L ARTS/CUL

INTERNAT'L CULTURES

MATH

PE

QUEST

READ 180

SCIENCE

SCIENCE--A&P

SCIENCE--PSI

SIGN LANGUAGE

SOCIOLOGY

SOPH ENGLISH

SPANISH II

SPED

STUD. NATURALIST

TAPS

WORLD HISTORY

STUD. NATURALISTTAPSWORLD HISTORY

Keeping track of visit statistics during A.R.T. and Seminar allows us to show our principal typical library usage during those times.

Also – gathering statistics on library programs (such as Media Night for example) could work to your advantage in terms of budget allocations.

You have a library website? Great! You can keep track of how many times your

site pages are “hit” two ways: District stats:

http://teachers.olatheschools.com Free web counters We use: Statcounter

Put it all together - End of Year Summary Concise Attractive Shows comparison across years Notes any changes in programming that may

affect numbers (such as snow days causing cancellation of Media Nights)

Last year’s summary report:

Summary report, contd.

Access this presentation: OE Library site: http://teachers.olatheschools.com/oelibrary/

click on: Presentations Slide Share http://www.slideshare.net/lfranklinoe

Recommended ResourcesHartzell, G.N. (1994). Building influence for

the school librarian. Worthington, Ohio: Linworth Publishing, Inc.

Rowntree, D. (1981). Statistics without tears: A primer for non mathematicians. New York: McMillan Publishing Company.

Trochim, W. & Donnelly, J.P. (2007). The research methods knowledge base (3rd ed). Mason, Ohio: Atomic Dog Publishing.