Date: 2-3-06

To: Greta Chapman

From: Supervisors

Re: Statistics Summary January 2005

This is the first month we are able to compare year-to-year statistics in Aleph.

• New borrowers are down, but we believe this is due to the drive over the last several years to sign patrons up for cards. We may have saturated our market to an extent, but continue to look for additional promotional venues.
• Circulation is up from the previous year. A certain amount of this is due to the increase in total patrons, but much is due to the change in renewal policy allowing patrons to renew items multiple times.

• While patron contacts are down, use of computers and hits on the homepage are up. We believe patrons are using the computers and homepage to self-serve, rather than approaching staff for assistance.

• ILL is up due to an issue with the ILL module; we continue to work to reduce ILL numbers by developing our collections, so are working on a fix for this issue.
• Youth tours are up due to the department’s robust outreach efforts. We believe this increase is due to Youth Services having an assigned staff member working on contacting potential tour groups.
• Attendance at Computer classes is up, although there were fewer classes. The blitz classes have had much higher attendance than our other classes.
• Materials added is down. This is partially because Technical Services has caught up on the backlog.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER