Engagement Consultant Southern Tier Library System
Reducing wait time is a top prerogative of any digital collections manager in public libraries (Costello, 2017). One experimental strategy is monitoring the ratio of holds per title, and for titles that exceed the ratio, enabling the cost per circ (CPC) lending model for eligible titles. In our study, average hold time will be compared between three public library systems in the same state. In each system, the collections manager has employed a different strategy for reducing average hold time over three months.
The purpose of this research is to discern if any of the strategies are more effective, while accounting for differences between systems (e.g., number of users, budget, collection). The following research question guides our study: Accounting for system differences, is there a significant relationship between system holds management strategy and average hold time?
Strategy 1: Applies CPC lending model one for titles with 15:1+ holds ratio. Strategy 2: Applies CPC lending model two for titles with 7:1+ holds ratio. Strategy 3: Control group; does not utilize CPC lending model.
The dataset will consist of the hold time information for electronic titles between three library systems over three months. These data will then be merged with aggregate data differentiating between library systems. Preliminary data will be analyzed using an ANOVA to compare average title hold time between three systems. Then, this outcome will be regressed on the library system (independent variable) along with covariates such as month, number of users, collection, and budget.