May 12, 2014

Question

Joy Garretson (MS)

I have a director that circulates 6 Kindles, each loaded with about 160 e-books/each. How do I could those e-books? As a simple 160, or as 960 (160 x 6)? If this director was able to circulate 6 copies of each book in paper format, I would report 960, but I don’t know what the norm is for counting items circulated on e-Readers. At any rate, I thought I’d throw it out to you and see what you do. Thanks!

SDC Comments

Susan Mark (WY)

So the patron checks out a Kindle? I would count that as one circ each time a Kindle goes out. Kind of like if you're checking out a laptop.

Peter Haxton (KS)

I agree with Susan.  The Kindle is the item being checked out.

Michael Golrick (LA)

I would concur also. Count the device. If it were a Playaway (brand name for a particular product) that had more than one title, you would only count it once. (Because of a grant, we are collecting “device circulation” as a discrete data item for our state survey.)

Joy Garretson (MS)

Gotcha. Thanks!

Kathy Sheppard (SC)

The thing is…the patron is actually getting 160 readable items, regardless of the package they come in. I do see the analogy with the Playaway.  Does the fact that the library is pre-loading the titles (making the choice for the patron) make the difference?   What would you do if the patron selected the titles, and there were only three of them?

Maybe a little more discussion as we certainly will see more of this kind of circulation.

Jamie McCanless (WI)

I refer to the part of the PLS definition for 552 Circulation of Electronic Materials that reads “Electronic Materials packaged together as a unit and checked out as a unit are counted as one unit.” So here, checking out an e-reader counts as one circulation, regardless of how many e-books have been loaded onto it.