ACRL Report - Books Physical Title and Volume Counts

Hello all:

I am trying to figure out the numbers of physical book titles and volumes in our system, and I am having difficulty understanding how to do that for the annual ACRL report. Could you help me understand how to do this and thank you in advance!

Here is the description from the ACRL Library Benchmarks site:

Physical

40A. Books Physical (title count)

Report physical book titles owned or leased by the library if individual titles are cataloged and/or searchable through the library catalog or discovery system. Exclude serials, microforms, maps, nonprint materials, and uncatalogued items. Include music scores if searchable by title through the library catalog or discovery system. Include government documents that are accessible through the library’s catalogs regardless of whether they are separately classified and/or shelved. Cataloged includes documents for which records are provided by the library or downloaded from other sources into the library’s card or online catalogs or discovery system. Government documents include local, state, regional, federal, and international. Include open access titles if the individual titles are searchable in the library’s catalog or discovery system.

40a. Books (volume count)

Although IPEDS discontinued the reporting of physical volume counts in 2016, ACRL understands that there is trend analysis value for this long-standing measure. Therefore, if available: Report the number of volumes using the ANSI/NISO Z39.7-2013 (section 4) definition for volume, which is as follows: “A single physical unit of any printed, typewritten, handwritten, mimeographed, or processed work, distinguished from other units by a separate binding, encasement, portfolio, or other clear distinction, which has been cataloged, classified, and made ready for use, and which is typically the unit used to charge circulation transactions. Either a serial volume is bound, or it comprises the issues that would be bound together if the library bound all serials.”

If you’re trying to do this in a production FOLIO environment, it will depend on what reporting tools you have available and, to some extent, to local decisions (e.g., do all physical volumes have item records). There’s a Slack channel, #reporting-general where you might be able to get advice from others who have created this or similar reports already. If you were gathering this data in the past from another system, my advice is to stick as much as possible to the same query strategies used before rather than reinventing a solution. All such counts are slightly inaccurate, so it’s better to be consistently inaccurate over time

Not sure if this is the type of response you’re hoping for?
-Laura

Yes, I would ask the same things Laura is asking. Do you have any reporting solutions for FOLIO already?