PRESENTED BY TUELO NTLOTLANG

INTRODUCTION UB LIBRARY-ITS EXPERIENCE OBJECTIVES SCANNING PROCESSES DOWNLOADING PROCESS CHALLENGES RECOMENDATIONS

Statistics is an important tool used by any service organization to measure the volume and nature of work it carries out in serving its various users. It informs the planning and budgeting processes Therefore libraries should take statistics as a major component that can be used to show where gaps exist in order to make meaningful decisions Usage statistics are collected in conjunction with almost every library process, examples of library statistics are as follows; Number of loans, Library acquisitions (ordering), Library shelving, Number of library visitors ( Chiware and Mbambo-Thata, 2009)

University of Botswana library has found it important to buy 13 hand- held scanners for capturing in-house usage statistics Each faculty team (floor) has been assigned some hand held scanner and the shelving team in each faculty (floor) is responsible for capturing data through the use of the scanners The scanning process is normally done before shelving starts every day

Identify items that are frequently used within the library Determine staffing workload at the floors (faculty team) Combine with circulation statistics to identify items that have never been used Use in conjunction with circulation statistics to assess book use to help decide which titles need to be increased

Switch on the scanner Choose option one “collect data” through the use of white arrows Press Enter Scan barcodes -press the yellow button plus the left blue button. Switch off the scanner after the process

Connect the hand held scanner to the computer Switch on the scanner Choose option two “up load data” Click ENTER from the scanner Double click on the portable reader “scanner icon” from your computer Type the file name Click OK for the scanner to start loading

Login on Millennium Circulation, then click on Count Use

Select Portable Reader

Click Process File

Choose the file you want to download

Take note of the pop up messages as the scanner download

During the downloading process, you can identify items that share barcodes and those that are not in the system N.B: For you to know the internal/inhouse usage of each item, you should CREATE LIST

Some barcodes are written by hand Scanning process is time consuming Downloading of scanners and statistics analysis is done after a long period of time by assistant librarian (circulation) Inconsistence of scanning

Hand written barcode should be printed Employ full time shelvers Each assistant librarian should download their own scanner and analyze statistics

Chiware, E. and Mbambo-Thata, B. (2009) Current trends in the collection and use of statistics in academic and public libraries in Africa. In Heaney, M. (ed.) Library statistics for the twenty-first century world: IFLA publications 138, national conference, Millennium Manual