What's going on in library circulation?

Is it the weather?
Wisconsin’s summery conditions have continued into the fall.

Football?
The early-season successes of the Badgers and Packers correspond with September Saturday and Sunday circulation tallies that are slightly below Middleton’s year-to-date averages.

Or is it something downright ominous?
According to the Foreward column in the 7/30/2007 issue of Publishers Weekly, “[T]he record-breaking sales of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows provided a much-needed shot in the arm to bookstore sales, which were down 4.3% through May and had fallen every month this year.”
Librarians tend to take stock in a reworking of an old hippie adage: Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries. In this case, if people buying fewer books, then they should be visiting their libraries more, right?

Actually, that may be the case here, as the number of “checkout sessions” at the Middleton Public Library in September 2007 increased a whopping 37%, compared to the previous September – from 13,125 to 17,999. Overall circulation increased just 2%. Maybe people are just visiting us more but checking out fewer materials each time.

What concerns me, though, is a 3% decrease in the circulation of materials for adults, as opposed to an 11% increase in the circulation of children’s materials. This decrease had occurred only one other time this year – in March, less than 1% -- so it’s much too early to declare that a trend is taking place.

After a review of a LINK spreadsheet that lists the circulation of library materials by format, however, it turns out that the circulation of books may not be an area of concern.
Here’s the breakdown of some September 2007/2006 comparisons in adult formats:

Format (2007 circ) (2006 circ)
Fiction (4,653) (4,484)
New fiction (1,960) (1,933)
New nonfiction (1,576) (1,476)

The declines have occurred here:

Format (2007 circ) (2006 circ)
Nonfiction (5,518) (5,745)
Paperbacks (2,490) (2,512)
Magazines (946) (1,139)

The downward trend in paperbacks has been occurring for the past 3 years and may be related to the declining popularity of the mass-market format.
The decline in magazine circ canceled out most of the gains we had experienced so far this year.

But here’s the eye-poppin' revelation:
Format (2007 circ) (2006 circ)
DVDs (7,508) (7,524)

Up til now, we had always experienced double-digit percentage increases in this particular format. And we’re already experiencing up-and-down use of our music CDs in both the teen and adult collections. (Welcome to downloading.) It's no secret that circulation of audiovisual materials has driven most circulation increases in public libraries in recent years.

Some may accuse me of obsessing over increasingly obsolete methods of library use measurement, and they may very well be right. (Full disclosure: I really love this stuff. It goes back to my boyhood of being a baseball statistics junkie. Want me to name the starting line-up and batting averages of the 1960 World Champion Pittsburgh Pirates? Actually, I can’t do the batting averages anymore, but I certainly know where to look them up.)

It’s not as though people are abandoning us. We can't seem to offer enough children's programs to meet demand. We continue to experience increased use of our public-access computers – this summer was particularly challenging – and reference staff is providing more instruction in helping patrons find their way through the “e-government” maze, a topic worthy of a separate post.

One last Nellie’s crunch: Of the 49 LINK library locations in the South Central Library System, 29 recorded declines in circulation when comparing September 2006 and 2007. Can’t tell you about their DVD circ, tho.