Old Tools for New Frontiers

Old Tools for New Frontiers

By Adam Brennan


Some tools stay useful. Regardless of how complicated a building blueprint becomes, the engineer can still find a good use for his measuring stick. In the world of the culinary, all the melon balers and oyster mallets in the world can’t replace the usefulness of a good sharp knife. These are examples of older tools that continue to benefit the user. I wish I could say the same thing about tools used to measure libraries.

Take, for example, the academic library I work in, whose true identity shall remain nameless. As part of a larger university, much of the funding that this library receives is based on how much the students take advantage of its resources. Sounds pretty simple and straightforward right? I’m afraid it isn’t.

If an industry changes too much, some of the tools used to evaluate said industry no longer effectively evaluate at effective evaluation equations. The tools continue to measure whatever it was they measure, but the industry moves on.

This is of great concern to those in the field of library science. Actually, I am under the distinct impression that librarians across the country are freaking out about how their tools no longer measure how much the library is used by patrons. Its old news to anyone who has a cursory knowledge of the field, but this old problem still holds relevance. After all, if the library measuring tools are no longer reliable, how do you appropriate funding?

The one tool I am thinking of is the gate counter at my academic library. The counter records the number of people who enter and exit the facility. Unfortunately this tool isn’t very reliable nor is it valid. The counter merely records movement. A student who enters the library, then later leaves to answer a phone call and comes back, only to exit again to use the restroom is counted three times by our gate counter. Then there are non-patrons who enter the library; faculty, janitors. Their presence is recorded by the counter. Then, there are the passer-byers; people cutting through the library to reach their classes. All recorded.

But libraries no longer exist to simply check out books to students or have them review reference material. Surely, those information containers are still there, but my academic library has moved to digital interests as well. Online periodicals, database searches, e-books. The counter doesn’t record all the people using these resources remotely.

The relevance of the counter, as you can see, is pretty darn close to zero. Yet every day I record the numbers to be presented as part of a collective evidence for more funding. People are presented with the statistical data I give them as fact about a very concrete way in which our library is used.

So, what is the library to do now that it has outgrown its tools? There is anecdotal evidence to support funding I suppose. Ask the librarians how often the library gets used. I don’t particular like that idea, as anecdotal evidence is the same stuff people use to prove smoking isn’t harmful and Nessie is still at large, patrolling the Loch of Ness. There is online statistical evidence. Record the number of page hits a day. I think we do that.

Personally, I like the notion of a counter that requires manual activation. A librarian aid presses a button every time a patron enters. That carries with it its own problems, like user discretion. It’s a hard problem, and there isn’t a very easy answer.


It’s a hard problem.