In the academic Information Commons, the frontline staff are key library assets. This article demonstrates one example of frontline staff observing, analyzing, and modifying user behavior using simple marketing techniques and space planning. James Madison University East Campus Library personnel increased circulation of books by increasing the visibility of the book collection. Minor furniture changes in the lobby, adding rotating themed book displays, and providing digital and print signage produced a dramatic effect. Circulation numbers essentially doubled for the lobby browsing book collection and markedly increased for books highlighted in the displays.

Recent ACRL guidelines1 and standards2 urge academic librarians to compare selected input and output measures with peer institutions for assessment. This paper provides an example of such a comparison, using a freely available statistical tool from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).3 Applying the NCES data tool to liberal arts colleges chosen by U.S. News and World Report (USN&WR)4 as the “Best Liberal Arts Colleges” provides one strategy for choosing financial benchmarks to target, as well as staffing and output measures for comparison. Using liberal arts colleges ranked in the top third by USN&WR, about $2,000/FTE would be the 2004 reported amount that the “best” colleges spent on library resources.

Data on the collection size, shelving, and usage of oversize books in the general library collection was requested using an e-mail survey targeted at fifty U.S. liberal arts college libraries. Typical size of oversize collections ranged from a few hundred to almost 200,000 volumes, with a median collection size of 6,359 and median percentage oversize of 1.6 percent. When the percentage circulation within the oversize collection was compared with the percentage circulation within the general collection, statistically significantly lower circulation was evident for oversize volumes (one-sided P=0.02), with a surprisingly small median difference of 3 percent.

No abstract

No abstract