Press Release: Miscellaneous Announcements
New Nielsen Book Library Service Will Measure Books Borrowed
Posted at 8:25AM Wednesday 10 Dec 2008
156 libraries from eight public library authorities across the UK have participated in a unique pilot scheme launched by Nielsen Book. The service, LibScan, collates in-depth information on books borrowed."The pilot scheme has been an outstanding success," said Paul Dibble, Head of Data Sales for Nielsen Book. "The information we collect allows us to analyse and report on a range of issues, including the number of borrowings by region; author or category including the new E4Library categorisations." Nielsen Book now plans to launch the service nationally in the summer of 2009 to include all of the library authorities in the UK. The full service – which is free to participating libraries - will provide accurate borrowing figures which can be used by libraries to improve their stock selection, promotion and optimize book budgets. The BookScan system plays a key role in the new service; BookScan is the world's largest continuous retail sales tracking service and is available in the UK, Ireland, Australia, US, South Africa, Italy, Spain, Denmark and New Zealand. Now Nielsen Book is applying that expertise to the UK library market, which will benefit hugely from the reports generated. The company is putting its proven analysis technologies to good use collecting and measuring public library book borrowing statistics. This data is generated on a weekly basis, with regular 4-weekly reports made available to the participating library authorities via an online analysis system. Paul Dibble added: "As the number of library authorities contributing grows, this data will become more important to the library community giving a unique picture of an individual authority's own book borrowing as well as national trends. Participation is free of charge and contributing authorities will receive regular reports in return for their data". Julie Meynink, Business Development Director for BookScan, went on to say: "Even with this relatively modest pilot scheme we have seen some interesting statistics and trends. For instance, last week the second most borrowed book, Silks by Dick Francis, was not issued by all participating authorities. Having an insight into what is borrowed nationally will assist libraries in their purchasing and stock decisions."
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