Have you ever wished you had a better frame of reference for your statistics, or a better idea of just how much of your collection is in use? Today, I’m spotlighting three reports that can help—and even better, you can set them up to be emailed to you regularly, with no need to go into KLAS and set them up every time. They are (drumroll, please):
- Patron Statistical Report
- Patron Status Summary
- Catalog Holding Summary
These reports provide a “snapshot” of your stats at a specific point in time, and they can be set up as repeating jobs in the Batch Manager. This means that you can receive one or more of these reports automatically every month (or however often you choose) and be sure that they were using the exact same parameters.
You can’t run any reports to find out exactly how many patron or items you had last year—those records are constantly changing as patrons and titles are added, deleted, and merged. However, if you schedule these reports to run regularly, you will have all of those numbers on hand if you need them in the future. Looking back over your saved snapshot reports will give you a clear view of how your stats change (or stay the same!) over time, providing context for your bigger quarterly or annual reports.
To start getting one or more of these reports automatically, set the options for the report however you want, select the Email output parameter, and enter your email address. Click “Run As Batch Job” to open the Batch Schedule window. The scheduler allows you to receive the email Monthly or Weekly, on a given day and time. To receive a report quarterly, select "Monthly," then check off only the first month of each quarter.
Snapshot reports include:
Patron Statistical Report
The Statistical report gives you a patron count split by gender and broken out by age range and / or county. The default age break-down is 25-65 (which gives the count for patrons under 25, 25 to 65, and over 65), but you can make this whatever you need. For example, entering “18-25-65-80” will give you counts for how many male and female patrons are under 18, are 18 to 25, are 25 to 65, and so on.
Patron Status Summary
While the Statistical Report gives you patron counts based on demographics, the Status Summary gives you counts broken out by patron type (such as Library, Nursing Home, and Individual) and status (such as active, suspended, and deceased). Together, the two reports can help you keep track of how your patron base changes over time.
Catalog Holding Summary
Finally, the Holding Summary gives counts for your materials, including Monograph titles and Equipment. The count is broken out by Library, Record type, Media, Titles, and Item Status (AVL, OUT, etc). If you want to know how many DB records you have, how many machines you have Available, or how many Descriptive Videos are currently Out, it’s all here. Note, however, that only titles with a Holding will be counted—meaning that Download Only titles will not be included.
As always, if you have questions about your results, or need help setting up these reports, please ask! We’re here to help.
