In the first quarter of 2017, the Collection Development Department did a retrospective look at collection statistics*, tracking the rise of digital formats and comparing them to our physical formats. Over the last ten years, digital collection usage has increased 7,347%, and 190% in the last five years.
Worth highlighting from this retrospective is our audiobook collection. From 2002 to 2016, the highest year for audiobook circulation was 2005 at 105,922. This included books on tape and books on CD combined, plus 79 checkouts from our first year in the fledgling Ohio Digital Library (formerly the Ohio eBook Project). Since then we’ve added Hoopla and RBdigital (formerly OneClickdigital) to our digital audio lineup. We also added Playaways to the physical collection and phased out books on tape.
In 2016 the the physical audiobook collection had a total circulation of 57,013. When digital checkouts are added in, the total number of Lane audiobook circulation is 105,179. That number makes 2016 our second highest year on record for audiobooks, with 46% those checkouts coming from our digital collections. More than any other format, digital makes sense for audio because it eliminates the cumbersome, multi-disc sets that are easily damaged. That said, we’ll continue purchasing non-digital options for the foreseeable future. Too many titles are still not available on digital, and many of our users do not like or do not have digital options available to them.
For these and other numbers, visit the Collection Development page on this website and see LPL PHYSICAL / DIGITAL CIRCULATION STATS RESTROSPECTIVE** under the Collection Statistics heading.
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*Keep in mind the fact that checkout periods impact our numbers. We have a longer checkout period than most libraries in the state, which artificially decreases our circulation statistics.
**See the note on the TOTALS page. These numbers are not for the complete collection, but specifically for the formats of which we have a direct digital format for comparison.