OUR LIBRARY IN NUMBERS
REFERENCE, CONSULTATION, AND SERVICE DESK ASSISTANCE
Priddy Library student employees, librarians, and staff helped with 2104 service desk questions and consultations, for a total duration of 230 hours (13782 minutes) of service provided to patrons. Overall, 29% more questions were asked and answered in 2023-2024 than the previous annual review period. Numbers were highest at the start of the Fall semester, when many students start their time at USG, and lowest in the summer months and December.
One outlier was April 8th, 2024, the day of a total solar eclipse in much of the United States, when 87 patrons asked if Priddy Library could provide solar eclipse glasses. This accounts for 30% of all April questions, and pushes April to the month when the most simple directional questions were answered.
Students from the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) and University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) frequently request reference and consultation help, as has been the trend for the last several years. This year, University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP) students asked for help at about the same amount as UMB students, perhaps as a result of strong collaboration between the library and several UMCP programs of study. Students from all nine partner institutions at USG, as well as Montgomery College students, were served by our service desk.
INSTRUCTION AND OUTREACH
Priddy Library staff and librarians held 105 instruction sessions, 66 of which were workshops. A total of 1258 students were reached through these instruction sessions. Priddy Library continued to host workshops in a variety of places, both in the library, at the Macklin Center, and online. Thirty-three of our workshops were online or hybrid.
SUBJECT GUIDES
Our subject guides have continued to be a resource for students at USG. Because they are on our website, people from around the world can and do also access them. Subject guides were viewed 40873 times, up 37% from the previous academic year. Our most viewed guides were guides that could be used for multiple courses or across disciplines: Citation Guide, SOWK 260/360, Social Work (UMB), and Priddy Library Workshops.
LIBRARY SPACE USAGE
Patron use of the library continues to trend upwards, with a 29% increase in the average number of patrons in the library for any given hour, and a 21% increase in total visitors. Both remain below pre-pandemic numbers, but represent 158% and 114% increase, respectively, over FY22 numbers. Night Owls (10pm-Midnight) usage saw particularly large growth, with a 71% increase from FY23 to FY24 (we didn’t offer Night Owls in FY22).
CIRCULATION
Loans were impacted by the University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions’ (USMAI) adoption of a new integrated library system (ILS), Alma, which required a 1-week migration period in May without any loans or returns, and modifications to our prior loan terms. Requested items from other institutions were especially impacted due to differences in the ways the two ILSes record data, and the learning curve for patrons in making use of the new request system.
We continued to address the technology needs of our patrons by updating our collection of circulating laptops and iPads to ones capable of running the most recent operating systems, phasing out those that could no longer support current software. In spring we extended laptop loans from 6 hours to 7 days and saw almost immediate increases in demand, with a 161% increase in loans over the same period of the previous semester.