Chattanooga Public Library, Tennessee is a four-branch system serving a population of 170,000. Library Director, Corinne Hill, made the decision to implement collectionHQ in 2012 to support informed, evidence based collection development and introduced ESP in 2016 to take that insight one step further.
Before the introduction of collectionHQ, staff at Chattanooga Public Library relied on anecdotal evidence and bestseller lists to plan selection. Implementing collectionHQ offered a comprehensive tool to budget and select new titles, opening the team’s eyes to the possibilities of big data. But just one part was missing: how did they apply that data to select prepublished titles?
Hill found a solution in employing ESP. “We wanted to create a collection strategy to aid in our budget for outcome while trying to build a more holistic collection that goes beyond the bestseller lists. We felt ESP would give us a tool to make the selection process easier and give our staff some accountability and focus when it came to selecting materials,” said Carol Green, manager at the Eastgate Library branch.
Combining collectionHQ’s budgeting, discovery and performance data with ESP would support Green’s goal and increase staff confidence when making selection decisions. Implementing ESP was a simple and straightforward process; staff had already become accustomed to collectionHQ and the library was a customer of Title Source 360.
Since implementation, circulation has risen, especially since purchasing ESP. Hill shared, “We hit a million plus circs last year for the first time ever and I give credit to collectionHQ and ESP. Our turnover rate is 3.2 and I’m super pleased.”
ESP’s mission is to help libraries increase circulation and reduce the percentage of their collection that is “Dead on Arrival” or DOA. DOA can be defined as material added to your library’s collection over a 12 month period, which subsequently does not achieve more than one circulation. Thanks to a combination of collectionHQ, ESP and effective handling of patron requests, DOA at Chattanooga is six percent, which is 10 percent lower than the U.S. average of 16.4 percent.
Evidence-based Selection Planning or ESP offers a decision support system integrating collectionHQ’s data analytics with our collection development platform, Title Source 360, to help libraries select current and pre-published titles. ESP’s powerful ranking and distribution engine suggests which titles to buy, how many and how to distribute across the branches.
Notes In The Margin 