Friday, April 30, 2004, 9:30:17 AM, you wrote:

CM> The student workers go out pick up everything, come
CM> back and make little slash marks in a notebook under each title. It
CM> gives us a general idea because of course some patrons reshelve anyway.
CM> It's been invaluable information as to which titles to cancel, etc. All
CM> uses are drastically down because of the Internet. For example, we used
CM> to have almost 1000 uses for Time & Newsweek in a year. Now it's well
CM> under 100.

One other alternative for current issue usage, assuming you have a
fixed location (bin, shelf, etc.) for current issues is to put a
barcode for each title on the shelf/bin next to the label that has the
title.  Then when students pickup five loose issues, they simply scan
that barcode five times.  Much easier and better than tick marks,
notebooks, or other manual techniques.  This way we get accurate stats
(well, as accurate as any usage stats are) on the current issues as
well as on the individually barcoded bound ones.

dan

--
Dan Lester, Data Wrangler  dan@RiverOfData.com 208-283-7711
3577 East Pecan, Boise, Idaho  83716-7115 USA
www.riverofdata.com  Have you forgotten 9/11?