Do you do a Year In Review? I started it a couple of years ago and then Covid hit last year so technically I've only done two Year in Reviews BUT it already has really helped me be a more reflective librarian. To see changes in circulation helps me question why? what changed? what improved? what needs improvement?
Here is what I learned from comparing this year's Year in Review stats to 2019's stats:
*Covid hurt circulation. No surprise there! Even though we were in school, for most of the year students had to rely on reserving books on the computer. There were no shopping the shelves so I knew we would take a hit on circulation numbers (by almost 10,000)! But we still averaged 158 checkouts per day so I feel that was strong with all things considered.
*We moved and sort of "genrified" our pictures books at the end of 2019 into subjects that my littles always ask for- dogs, superheroes, princesses, pirates, etc. On the 2019 Year in Review, the top ten favorite picture books were all Mo Willems. Don't get me wrong- I LOOOOOOVE Mo but want my kids to be more well-rounded readers! I was happy to see that my top ten picture books included books from a lot of different authors and subjects (even though 2 Pigeon books were still in the top ten). I was happy and felt like that was my "why" for moving and shifting my picture books.
*Our Biography numbers are dismal. We've tried so hard to choose fun, interesting Biographies and they just aren't getting checked out. So we are moving them into the non-fiction books instead of giving them their own section. Hopefully next year, we will see some better Biography numbers.
These are just simple reports from Atriuum and I sure don't do anything fancy with them. The kids think it's fun to see our stats and some great discussion has ensued about what surprised them. Also it gives them some ideas for other books to read. So here's my little display and happy Summer!
