Thomas, Jimmy

English

University of Denver

Collaborative LibrarianshipVolume 4 | Issue 3 Article 42012Marmot and Prospector—A Statistical ReviewJimmy ThomasExecutive Director, Marmot Library Network, jimmy@marmot.orgFollow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.du.edu/collaborativelibrarianshipPart of the Collection Development and Management CommonsThis From the Field is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ DU. It has been accepted for inclusion in CollaborativeLibrarianship by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ DU. For more information, please contact jennifer.cox@du.edu,dig-commons@du.edu.Recommended CitationThomas, Jimmy (2012) "Marmot and Prospector—A Statistical Review," Collaborative Librarianship: Vol. 4 : Iss. 3 , Article 4.Available at: https://digitalcommons.du.edu/collaborativelibrarianship/vol4/iss3/4Thomas: Marmot and Prospector  Marmot and Prospector—A Statistical Review  Jimmy Thomas (jimmy@marmot.org)  Executive Director, Marmot Library Network  Abstract  Public and academic libraries of the Marmot Library Network in western Colorado joined the Prospector regional union catalog hosted by the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries. Growth in patron-initiated resource sharing between Colorado Front Range/Wyoming and Western Slope libraries is analyzed in terms of circulation counts, lend/borrow ratios, load balancing issues, and collection development chal-lenges.   Keywords: library resource sharing; union catalog; Marmot Library Network; Colorado Alliance of Re-search Libraries; INN-Reach; Prospector; Colorado; inter-library loan; patron-initiated ILL   Introduction  In 2011, eleven public and five academic librar-ies of the Marmot Library Network joined the Prospector regional union catalog hosted by the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries. This project, substantially funded by the Institute of Museum & Library Services, supports patron-initiated resource sharing between Front Range and Western Slope libraries. This statistical re-view covers the first 14 months of the project.  The Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant application through IMLS claimed that resource sharing among Marmot libraries in 2010 was a solid foundation on which to expand resource sharing across Colorado:  “[Marmot] implemented patron-initiated holds (PIH) in 2007 and significantly in-creased interlibrary lending on the Western Slope. PIH statistics reflect the success of in-terlibrary lending among Marmot libraries:  • 255,061 holds were filled by all Marmot libraries in 2009.  • 54% of 243,394 public library holds were filled by out-of-district materi-als.  • 78% of 3,871 academic library holds were filled by other-institution items.”  The grant application proposed 2 goals, 5 objec-tives, and 4 outcomes. Most were achieved in the first year of the project; two are the focus of this paper (underlined phrases serve as section titles below):  Objective 3: Double ILL traffic between the Western Slope and the Front Range and in-crease the resources available to rural li-brary patrons.  Outcome 4 – Rural library users on the Western Slope as well as metropolitan users on the Front Range will have access to unique statewide resources.  “Double ILL traffic …”  Most libraries served by Marmot have observed significant increases in courier traffic since im-plementing Prospector. Legends of having to make space for more courier bins, to increasing courier stops from 3 to 5 days per week, and anticipating rising courier costs based on vol-ume (not to mention fuel surcharges) are only offset by stories of readers delighted by easy access to a huge regional collection.  The statistical foundation of this growth begins with data tracked in one Millennium system shared by 21 public, academic, and school librar-ies west of Denver.   Chart 1 shows recent increases in holds filled. Intra-Marmot Holds Filled (blue) increased 21%   Collaborative Librarianship 4(3):117-123 (2012)  117 1Thomas: Thomas: Marmot and ProspectorPublished by Digital Commons @ DU, 2012Thomas: Marmot and Prospector    Collaborative Librarianship 4(3):117-123 (2012)  118 from 2009 to 2010, and 21% again from 2010 to 2011. Prospector Holds Filled (red) account for half of the 41% increase in all holds filled from 2010 to 2011.   Can we conclude that joining 15 Marmot librar-ies to 25 other libraries in one union catalog re-sulted in over 60,000 new circulations on the Western Slope? Perhaps.   One unexpected feature of the INN-Reach soft-ware that powers Prospector is this: when INN-Reach selects one Marmot library to fill a request by a reader from another Marmot library, the hold is pushed into the Marmot system as an item-level hold. Some of the circulations graphed in red are in fact intra-Marmot holds processed by Prospector.  How many of these new circulations (red) may have been due to promotion of the new ser-vice—parties, posters, press releases, and even features in the Marmot online catalog leading users to Prospector? Available data do not an-swer this question.     “… the Western Slope and the Front Range …” f rospector from February 2, 2011 (Marmot Day). ies ctor in 4 cohorts from February to August 011.  (Jan 2012) and 2 (Feb 2011) with 14 eb 2012).  ry users … as well as metropoli-n users …” ed about inordinately high lend/borrow tios.   t placing requests the load tends to vel out.  d  in a nor-al position in paging priority. e-ls balance lend/borrow ratios, but it should mini- Chart 2 shows 14 months of activity by 4 sets olibraries. Data points are stacked to highlight incremental activity as Marmot libraries joined P The blue foundation represents 7 public libraron the Front Range; the red layer 11 Marmot publics, the green layer 17 academics and spe-cials; and the purple icing on this layer cake 5 Marmot academics. Marmot members joined Prospe2 The net growth is small. Compare month 1 (Jan 2011) with 13(F “… rural librata Soon after joining Prospector, libraries became concernra A product manager at Innovative said this al-ways happens when a library joins an active INN-Reach system. Before patrons are even aware of the new service, library staff are bar-raged by requests from libraries already actively participating. After patrons of the new memberlibrary starle The Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries, which hosts Prospector, took advantage of one INN-Reach setting to ameliorate this problem: Marmot libraries were placed at the bottom of apaging priority list, with the plan that requests would eventually increase to a normal level anMarmot libraries could be positionedm The Alliance also implemented INN-Reach “rgional paging”, so that Front Range libraries would get paged to fill Front Range requests, Western Slope libraries would get paged to fill Western Slope requests, and requested materiawould cross the Continental Divide as little as possible. This feature probably does nothing to 2Collaborative Librarianship, Vol. 4 [2012], Iss. 3, Art. 4https://digitalcommons.du.edu/collaborativelibrarianship/vol4/iss3/4Thomas: Marmot and Prospector  mize the carbon footprint of this resource shar-ing activity.  Unbalanced lend/borrow ratios continue to be a concern. Chart 3 plots 14 months of Marmot ac-ademic libraries. In May 2011 Colorado Chris-tian University (CCU) lent eleven books for eve-ry one they borrowed. In February 2012 the CCU ratio had settled down to 2.1. The trend looks good, but to this day all Marmot academ-ics except Colorado Mesa University (CMU) lend more than they borrow.   Even if Marmot academics might be approach-ing a fair ratio, five publics are still providing generous service to readers across the region. Chart 4 shows these libraries apparently con-verging on a 3-to-1 ratio.   Other Marmot publics (Chart 5) are bouncing around a 1.0 ratio, with Mesa County Public Li-brary District (MCPLD) and Basalt Regional Li-brary (BRL) enjoying the biggest advantage in this resource sharing arena.  Charts 3, 4, and 5 sort libraries from top to bot-tom by average lend/borrow ratio during the 14-month period surveyed. CCU is the most generous academic, and Wilkinson Public Li-brary (Telluride) is the most generous public.   To put charts 3-5 in perspective, Chart 6 graphs “stable” Front Range public libraries that have participated in Prospector for years; and Chart 7 graphs the most generous Front Range academic libraries.   These groups of Front Range libraries that have shared resources via Prospector for a decade are apparently still not in a “stable” pattern. One has to wonder what might cause such wide var-iations in lend/borrow ratios from month to month, but this paper does not address that question.  “… unique statewide resources …”  The title of this section comes from the LSTA grant application, Outcome 4: “Rural library users on the Western Slope as well as metropoli-tan users on the Front Range will have access to unique statewide resources.” The growth in Pro-spector activity reported here seems to indicate that readers across the state are benefiting. A new challenge is to better balance collections, and minimize Prospector’s carbon footprint.  Marmot libraries have not yet seen Prospector-related courier cost increases. (Courier costs are established each year based on previous-year volume.) Come 2013 libraries might have second thoughts about the value of this popular service.  One recent effort to balance the load is to en-courage net lenders to post lists of titles most frequently requested, and to urge collection de-velopment librarians to acquire more of what their customers are getting from other libraries. But this campaign had barely begun by the time this paper was written.  At the Prospector Directors meeting in Denver (Nov 17, 2011) I called attention to inordinate lend/borrow ratios. At least one director said this had been discussed many times. Except for a now-defunct subsidization of Denver Public Library by the Colorado State Library for providing statewide ILL service, no cost model for compensating net lenders has ever been im-plemented. Still it seems good to acknowledge net lenders, and state a rationale that makes sense to stakeholders in those institutions.  Figure 8 lists Prospector libraries sorted by lend/borrow ratio in Q3 of 2011.  Lend/borrow ratios under .75 are in green; lend/borrow ratios over 1.5 are in red; and lend/borrow ratios over 3.0 are in bold red. Six Marmot libraries (“M” in column 1) hit uncomfortable peaks in Q2 (com-pare charts 3 & 4, above).  Otherwise, Marmot libraries are scattered across the spectrum.  It’s easy to assume that relatively rich public libraries in resort towns ,Telluride, Vail, Aspen, and Steamboat Springs, attract an excessive number of loan requests. CCU has a specialized collection that tends to attract requests for books on Christianity. But what is it about the Western State College collection that results in a 2.0 lend/borrow ratio, like that of the University of Northern Colorado? And what does Adams State College have that puts their lend borrow ratio of 1.5 close to that of the University of Col-orado at Boulder?   Collaborative Librarianship 4(3):117-123 (2012)  119 3Thomas: Thomas: Marmot and ProspectorPublished by Digital Commons @ DU, 2012Thomas: Marmot and Prospector  Conclusion  Regarding grant Objective 3, ILL traffic between the Front Range and the Western Slope in-creased, but available data do not show whether the increase is literally double what it was be-fore. Marmot libraries saw an increase of 41% in holds filled, double the 21% increase that was handled among Marmot libraries.    Collaborative Librarianship 4(3):117-123 (2012)  120  Regarding grant Outcome 4, rural library users as well as metropolitan library users are more easily getting materials from all over the state. Whether readers are actually benefiting from access to a greater shared collection is outside the scope of this paper.   Concerns about lend/borrow ratios continue to prompt efforts to balance the load more fairly, but we have only begun to work on techniques such as coordinating collection development.    4Collaborative Librarianship, Vol. 4 [2012], Iss. 3, Art. 4https://digitalcommons.du.edu/collaborativelibrarianship/vol4/iss3/4Thomas: Marmot and Prospector                                                        Collaborative Librarianship 4(3):117-123 (2012)  121 5Thomas: Thomas: Marmot and ProspectorPublished by Digital Commons @ DU, 2012Thomas: Marmot and Prospector                                      Collaborative Librarianship 4(3):117-123 (2012)  122 6Collaborative Librarianship, Vol. 4 [2012], Iss. 3, Art. 4https://digitalcommons.du.edu/collaborativelibrarianship/vol4/iss3/4Thomas: Marmot and Prospector  Figure 8.     Collaborative Librarianship 4(3):117-123 (2012)  123 7Thomas: Thomas: Marmot and ProspectorPublished by Digital Commons @ DU, 2012

Marmot and Prospector—A Statistical Review

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Marmot and Prospector—A Statistical Review

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