By Adam St.Pierre
Graduate Student, School of Library and Information Science

Circulating Materials

More than Just Books: Part One looked at research online through the databases that LSU Libraries provides. What about the "dusty old books"? Do they actually leave the building? Circulation statistics report on what is checked out of the Library and how often.

Circulating Items:

Middleton Library circulates a large variety of resources that are available to undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty. In 2010, approximately 88,917 items have been checked-out so far to members of the LSU community.

LSU Libraries reports what subjects circulate the most by user category (i.e.: undergraduate, graduate, and faculty). The 2009 Circulation report was based upon 33,874 checkouts for undergraduates, 35,557 for graduate students, and 17,252 checkouts for faculty members (not pictured in graphs).

Materials checked out by Undergraduates in 2009:

• English 13.98%
• History 12.72%
• Design 11.34%
• Music 6.98%
• Religion 4.54%
• Foreign Languages 4.49%
• Biological Sciences 3.6%
• Mathematics, Physics and Astronomy, and Chemistry less than 1%

Materials checked out by Graduate students in 2009:

• English 11.94%
• Music 11.92%
• History 9.04%
• Design 5.16%
• Mathematics 4.84%
• Engineering 3.88%
• Biological Sciences 3.81%
• Physics and Astronomy 1.86%
• Chemistry 1.67%

Remember, these statistics don’t necessarily show which students use the library the most: remember, each discipline has a different number of students. Additionally, these statistics do not count the number of online articles accesses- and these library resources are highly used in a variety of disciplines.

Course Reserves

Middleton Library allows faculty members to place items on reserve for students throughout the course of the semester. Items can be placed on reserve for 2 hours, 1 day, 3 days, or 7 days depending on the instructor’s decision. Additionally, the course reserve program allows Professors, staff members, Graduate students, and students to place certain items on reserve. Through the course reserve program, students and faculty can access audiovisual materials, audiovisual equipment, books, magazines, newspapers, laptops, carrels, keys and clickers. In the 2009-2010 report, the number of items placed on reserve totaled to 8580.

Undergraduate Use of Course Reserves:

• 1908 books
• 2427 Laptops
• 265 uses of Audiovisual Equipment
• 11 Audiovisual materials
• 669 clickers used

Graduate Use:

• 1145 books
• 1287 Laptops
• 79 uses of Audiovisual Equipment

The LSU Libraries is more than just books. Indeed, we have many books for our patrons who are looking for books, but our other resources should not be overlooked: online databases, subject librarians, our course- LIS 1001, hundreds of computers, and of course, the coffee shop.