Nielsen Book, part of global information and media group Nielsen Company, US, has announced that following the success of its LibScan project, the company plans to launch the live reporting service at the end of May. The service collects library borrowing figures and Nielsen Book is confident that its target of 50 percent coverage of all UK libraries by 2009-end is achievable. As of April 2009, the LibScan service reported 15 library authorities submitting weekly issues data and a further 10 waiting to join the scheme.
It has been observed that while library authorities know what they are issuing from their LMS (Library Management System), they often do not know if this matches, under-performs or over-performs against other library authorities. Nielsen Book sought to create a system which would solve this dilemma. By creating a panel of library authorities who provide to BookScan a weekly list of the ISBNs they have issued, it is now possible to create a total UK view of issues. Authorities can therefore use this information to compare their issues against other similar authorities and check national trends.
Nielsen Book is now set to launch the service. The data is made available free of charge to participating libraries. The data will be accessed by a sophisticated yet simple reporting tool which can create title and author charts over self-defined time periods. Charts can be run for a combination of genre (over 240 to choose from), format and publication date. This allows the participating authority to have a clear picture of their own borrowings in the context of the wider library community, enabling them to spot new opportunities and manage their book offering. In addition, borrowing trends over time can be viewed by genre to understand seasonality.
In the first instance, data will be updated every four weeks, just six working days after the period end, providing timely and actionable borrowing information. The main focus for Nielsen Book now is to recruit more libraries because the more the libraries that submit their issues data, the more will be the benefit derived by the participants.
