The CMO Survey - Highlights and Insights Report - Spring 2024
New loan rules
1. Loan Rules and 1.9 Million Circulations
A big piece to the puzzle by Kayci Barnett
By PresenterMedia.com
2. Summary of Presentation
Key Result – 1.9 Million Circulations
Loan Rules – How can we enhance access and increase use?
New Loan Rules to achieve goal
Goal
Formula – Using math to determine new limits and planned change
Loan Rules
Formula
Recommended
Questions?
7. Loan Rules-Current
Material
Type
Loan
Period Hold
Hold
Limit Renewable
Overdue Fees
per item Limit
Books, Audio Books, Magazines (except current
issues)
21 days
this item has a 3 day grace period
Yes 25 *twice 10¢/day
max. $3.00
50
Storytelling Kits (CSAT) 21 days
this item has a 3 day grace period
Yes 25 *twice 10¢/day
max. $3.00
5
Puppets 21 days
this item has a 3 day grace period
Yes 25 *twice 10¢/day
max. $3.00
5
TV Shows, Nonfiction (DVD) 14 days
this item has a 3 day grace period
Yes 25 *twice 10¢/day
max. $3.00
5
High-demand movies and Blu-Ray movies 7 days
this item has a 1 day grace period
Yes 25 *twice $1/day
max. $10.00
5
Music on CD 7 days
this item has a 1 day grace period
Yes 25 *twice 10¢/day
max. $3.00
5
Video Games 7 days
this item has a 1 day grace period
Yes 25 No 50¢/day
max. $10.00
2
8. How can we reach our goal?
It’s easy, every customer checks out 4 more items per year!
400,000 items 97,000 customers
9. New Loan Rules – Simple from 7 rules to 2
Material Type Loan Period Limit
Hold
Limit
Renewable Overdue Fees Grace
All Items 100
combined
25 6 – 1 courtesy
renewal
$.10/day max $3 3 day
Books, Audio Books, Magazines
(except current issues) Playaway
Audio,
puppets
21 days 50/ea No fines or damage fees
for children’s picture
books (JE) and Board
Books (BB) if returned.
Media: DVDs, CDs, VideoGames,
Playaway Views
7 days 15/ea
13. Fines 10¢/day $3 max*
10¢/day
*No fines for children’s picture books or board books.
To encourage early literacy so that parents will not
fear letting their young kids handle books.
14. HI-DEMAND
• Limit 5
• $1/day max $10
• 7days/1day grace
• Off the Shelf 38%
• Limit 5
• $.10 max $3
• 14 day/3day grace
• Off the Shelf 27%
TV-SERIES
Combine Hi Demand and TV Series
DVDs make up 60% or our circulation but are limited to only 5 high demand and 5 TV series
2
The New Combined DVD Rule
•Limit of 15 no matter the type.
•Check out period 1 week.
15. New Loan Rules – Beginning April 1st No Foolin’
Material Type Loan Period Limit
Hold
Limit
Renewable Overdue Fees Grace
All Items 100
combined
25 6 – 1 courtesy
renewal
$.10/day max $3 3 day
Books, Audio Books, Magazines
(except current issues) Playaway
Audio,
puppets
21 days 50/ea No fines or damage fees
for children’s picture
books (JE) and Board
Books (BB) if returned.
Media: DVDs, CDs, VideoGames,
Playaway Views
7 days 15/ea
16. Loan Rules-Current
Material
Type
Loan
Period Hold
Hold
Limit Renewable
Overdue Fees
per item Limit
Books, Audio Books, Magazines (except current
issues)
21 days
this item has a 3 day grace period
Yes 25 *twice 10¢/day
max. $3.00
50
Storytelling Kits (CSAT) 21 days
this item has a 3 day grace period
Yes 25 *twice 10¢/day
max. $3.00
5
Puppets 21 days
this item has a 3 day grace period
Yes 25 *twice 10¢/day
max. $3.00
5
TV Shows, Nonfiction (DVD) 14 days
this item has a 3 day grace period
Yes 25 *twice 10¢/day
max. $3.00
5
High-demand movies and Blu-Ray movies 7 days
this item has a 1 day grace period
Yes 25 *twice $1/day
max. $10.00
5
Music on CD 7 days
this item has a 1 day grace period
Yes 25 *twice 10¢/day
max. $3.00
5
Video Games 7 days
this item has a 1 day grace period
Yes 25 No 50¢/day
max. $10.00
2
17. The new loan rules can only succeed with
your help!
1.9 million Circs for 2014!
Editor's Notes
It’s a great measure of the appropriateness of items procured are what are community want. It is also what other libraries in our peer group are doing.
We have to work together to fix this problem, and we already have. Locations are working on marketing their collections better, by shelving items out and creating displays. TS is using Collection HQ to make better purchasing decisions, and weeding lists. Employees are taking initiative: Jan created displays at the Circ Desk. Janina has lead youth services in innovative practices like checking items out at outreach events, and Gigi created a cool scavenger hunt to encourage checkouts. However, a vital piece of this puzzle are the policies that we have in place that might be creating unnecessary barriers to checkout, and as part of the 2014 annual plan, Circulation’s goal is to “Make recommendations to modify policies and/or procedures intended to enhance access and increase use.” We’ve requested no budget increase to accomplish this.
Because this is the alternative! We are using tax payer money to purchase items, and so we should be good stewards of that money, and make sure the items purchased are for the entire community.
The % difference between expected circulation, and actual circulation numbers. We averaged 19% below our monthly goal.
The loan rules were added piecemeal as item types were added to the collection, and there was a desire to make sure there was enough on shelf to browse. The problem with this practice now is we are constraining our customers and it makes it harder to know what they actually want. Ensuring items are on the shelf is no longer necessary with our improved catalog. Bibliocommons makes it very easy to see what we have because the virtual shelf is as good as the physical one. We know we need to change the loan rules, but to what?
We currently have 97,000 customers who are able to checkout (owe less than $10). We circulated 1.6million items last year, 400,000/20% less than our goal. If we divide 400,000 items by the number of customers we have, 97,000, then…each customer would need to checkout 4 more items per year to reach our goal of 2million! This is very exciting because with a few small changes to our current loan rules we can increase reach our goal. We know that DVDs are our most popular items so I suggest we make changes to their limits.
As you can see these loan rules are more generous than the previous set, and will enable users to check out the 4 more we’d like them to so that we can reach our goal. It also simplifies the rules to having to explain 4 instead of 8. Also, TS and Management, supports expanding access, and assures us that they will purchase more of the items that disappear off of our shelves because of popularity. So please support these new loan rules, and say goodbye to these…
We are going to be one of the first libraries to try a courtesy renewal. Abby discovered and Michael championed that this is something we can do. We feel that one automatic renewal (w/o a hold) can help people get items back to us on time.
Keeping in mind our 4 more goal, we increased the total renewals from 2 to 6. One of the renewals is the courtesy then the customer can initiate 5 more
The grace period won’t be included in literature to the customer, but we decided to standardize it across the collections except for devices.
The grace period won’t be included in literature to the customer, but we decided to standardize it across the collections except for devices.
We’ve discovered through collection HQ that DVDs are our most popular item, but limit customers to 5 of each category. Not only is this limiting our circulation numbers, but it is time consuming at the self checkout when we try to determine how many Hi Demand or TV series they have at home, and have to trade DVDs so they can take home the one they want. DVD’s have an off the shelf rate of 37% for Hi Demand and 27% for TV series. By combining the two types in Sirsi we can average the rules for each, increase the limit, and then allow the customer to decide what they want, feature films or TV series.
As you can see these loan rules are more generous than the previous set, and will enable users to check out the 4 more we’d like them to so that we can reach our goal. It also simplifies the rules to having to explain 4 instead of 8. Also, TS and Management, supports expanding access, and assures us that they will purchase more of the items that disappear off of our shelves because of popularity. So please support these new loan rules, and say goodbye to these…
So that we can reach our goal of 4 more checkouts per customer per year, and put the last piece of the puzzle into our Key Results!
With about 5 changes to the Loan Rules we can put the final piece of the puzzle into the picture of low circulation, and get our numbers up with the rest of our peer group.