It is annual statistics time for libraries, which requires that I round up various numbers related to our collection, use, facilities, and personnel and report these numbers to the consortia that compile them. On its face, it is the most tedious kind of work that I do, steeped as it is in quantatative metrics and tweaking reports, but it also provides an opportunity to check in and reflect on our reporting infrastructure, to ensure it’s still working and that the procedures make sense.
I’ve always said that being an effective assessment librarian requires holding on to two contrasting beliefs: first, that every single number that you ever report will be wrong; and second, that it absolutely must be wrong in a methodically consistent way that represents the highest level of accuracy that we can aspire to. It hurts me in a way, that my most fundamental professional duty is to be wrong, but meticulously so. When I wish feel more noble about it, I can hearken back to Socrates’ knowing that he knew nothing. We’re basically the same, he and I.
The interesting part of the stats process is after it’s all done, to find the most compelling stories the numbers are telling and to inquire further why they should be this way. I’ve seen a lot of our traditional metrics starting to rebound this year after COVID, which leaves me with a lot of complicated feelings. At the British Columbia Library Conference in 2021, I said the following about usage stats as indicators of value:
Let’s start from a very broad shared ground of believing that libraries have some sort of value to some set of people. And the way we have traditionally measured that value is primarily through quantitative usage metrics…gate counts, head counts, workshop attendance, circulation, reference questions, etc. And for over a year, most of that was just…gone. Gate count: 0. Circulation…even when our curbside service started, the numbers were a fraction of our regular circulation…And yet, I’m completely confident that if I asked you all if libraries largely lost value this past year, I would hear a resounding NO. If I asked you if there was less work put in to these virtual and curbside services than the in-person one, I’d also hear a lot of NOs.
And I think it’s very easy for us to say that our traditional metrics did not work this year, but I don’t think we can just say “well that doesn’t describe our value this year” about gate counts and info lit sessions and physical checkouts without making the next logical hop to…they never actually did.
Paterson, Amy. “How do we measure, measure this year.” BCLA, 2021.
To see our metrics bounce back, for me, is partially to see a grand opportunity for change slipping away, that opportunity to rewrite the library narrative closing. But I suppose libraries alone cannot collapse neoliberalism, and defining our value by our values within neoliberal academia is always going to be Sisyphean.
There are some changes, though. The shift from print to electronic collections stands out in both our collection numbers and circulation figures. While this change might seem semantic, it requires a major shift in thinking about not only the library as place, but who our users are; how, when, and where they access us; and ultimately what the library is even for, which is the question all our metrics should seek to answer. Gate count numbers I still report, but we haven’t tracked our overall gate count figures at TRU since we moved into the new building with the Tim Horton’s in the lobby. I say that last a little facetiously, but I have a glint of hope that we’re moving beyond seeing anything signifcant that the gate count number has to say.
The other number I always like to check on is the librarian consultation statistics that have increased almost every year since I implemented the new booking system in 2017-18. This is one of the figures that for me come closest to getting at a library value story: building relationships and cultivating care for our communities. This past year, the numbers increased by over 200, which is the most significant increase since the 2017-18 year. This is to me in part a story about potential; we’re limiting in how much we can see students by our capacity. How much more could we do if had the capacity?
When I interviewed librarians for my research on academic librarian work during COVID, one of the biggest changes seemed to be the shift from forward-facing (countable) services to infrastructure support (a lot less readily countable). That’s a challenge we’re facing in our current program review work, and it’s a challenge that less flashy services will always face. This would seem to feed into the unfortunate trend of gradually offloading infrastucture onto vendors, which I of course have a lot more to say about but will not follow that snake hand right now.
My BCLA talk from 2 years ago ended with choices:
We make choices all the time, and sometimes we don’t like to admit that’s what we’re doing. If we just sit back and let decisions make us by doing what we’ve always done, we lose our value by losing ourselves.
We are still making choices, and I like to think we (here at the TRU library at least) are doing that a little more deliberately than we used to.