Circulations per capita and per Active Cardholders At Ontario’s Public Libraries, 2001-2013: FOPL Data Report, Second Series
The last report on the percentage of Resident Population which were Active Cardholders showed a general downward trend over the period with 2013 recording the lowest number for the aggregate figure. The data are reported in tables and a chart. The picture for the various Bands varied, but in most, this measure was down.
Curiously, the aggregate figure for Resident Population is up by 28% and Annual Circulations is up by 32% while aggregate number of Cardholders is down marginally at -1%. It was the growth of the Resident Population without a concomitant increase on Cardholders which were the drivers.
But why are Total Annual Circulations rising if there are roughly the same number of Cardholders (4.9 million) in 2001 as in 2013? The Table in this report shows circulations per capita (that is, the average of all Annual Circulations for each library divided by that library’s population) went from 8.1 in 2001 to 7.7 in 2013.
In the first series of reports we looked at Annual Circulations per Active Cardholder and, given what we saw in the last report, this number must be going up; after all, circulations increased by 32% and Cardholders essentially held steady.
There are five pages of tables which follow. The first Table is a summary table that is structured much like that in the previous report with summary data from all of our 301 libraries. However, note the number of libraries which have data analyzed in the two sets of tables—the numbers differ slightly. This fact is a result of there being a few libraries which did not report Active Cardholders from time to time. Given that this number is in the denominator of the calculated Circulations per Cardholder and it is impossible to divide by 0, they are dropped out of both the Circulations per capita and Circulations per Cardholder in order to have a direct comparison. As a result, a few numbers here or there will differ between the two tables.
The focus here is on the last three lines for each of the Bands data where we have the traditional circulations per capita, our circulations per cardholder, and the multiple of the second to the first on the last of those three lines (by the arrow ==>.)
For example, the “All Libraries” table at the top reports that these libraries had 8.0 circulations per capita in 2001 and 17.0 circulations per cardholder. Circulations per cardholder that year were about 2.1 times greater than circulations per capita. On this third line, these calculations are carried out for all Bands and for all years. Generally, circulations per cardholder are about twice that of circulations per capita but Band 3 does get to three times a few years as do the First Nations libraries in 2011.
Looking back at the aggregate (“All Libraries”) figures, it appears that these aggregate figures show a fairly consistent relationship between the two methods of calculating circulations per population.
It is a general rule that when annual library data are published for the first time, it will take about three years for enough consistency between how the definitions are understood by the community before one can be confident that we are closer to the apples to apples kinds of comparisons that delight the data analyst. The Ontario data are no different but the data have not been available to examine in such detail prior to the Ministry’s commitment to the Open Data initiative so this natural process of improving data has not had the chance to take place.
Meanwhile, is it plausible that each person who holds a library card in Ontario took out—on average—18.6 items in 2013? Or are Cardholders being systematically under reported? Each seems plausible and it will likely take a few years to find out.
Here is this week’s chapter: W10_Circulations_per_capita_detail.
Stephen Abram
Executive Director, FOPL