Statistical overview: DLS emerging trends

In the last quarter of 2020, the Department of Library Services (DLS) and its users started to get used to the new normal. The use of digital resources continued to rise. In response to this, the library bought less printed books, but remarkably increased the number of e-books and invested in two valuable e-book subscription databases, thereby tripling the e-book collection. As a result, the use of e-books increased by 58% in 2020.

The library also began to allow a limited number of bookings for library space. Each library had a limited number of these seats available, to comply with the Covid-19 regulations. The Merensky 2 Library received more bookings than the other faculty libraries. The demand for space increased in November, when the library received 2 196 confirmed seat bookings. Overall, 3 438 bookings were honoured from September to December, with most users reserving a 09:00 slot. Initially, the Merensky 2 Research Commons allowed a maximum of 10 seat bookings, by the end of October 2020 the seat occupancy rate was over 90% in that space, after which the library added 13 more seats for bookings.

The demand for digitised material continued to rise as the users needed access to some of the library's physical resources, resulting in an 89% increase in the number of pages digitised in 2020. The Information Specialists also significantly populated ClickUP with the material needed to support teaching and learning.  A total of 556 ClickUP pages were created in 2020 (141% increase from 2019), with 4 306 references added (62% increase from 2019).

During 2020 there were fewer enquiries than in 2019, but the library received more questions from staff members. Postgraduate students and staff members also consulted more in 2020. The number of postgraduate consultations increased by 22%, and staff consultations doubled (100.1% increase), while the number of undergraduate consultations decreased by 18%. Postgraduate students also attended more training in 2020 than in the previous two years.

Amongst many other communication tools, the library has a Chat to a Librarian service which also came in handy during the national lockdown. The number of chat sessions increased by 54% in 2020, with almost 11 000 messages exchanged between users and librarians. Library staff spent a total of 159 hours, 19 minutes and 29 seconds on the chat service in 2020. Library users typically waited 35 seconds for a response. The majority of the users who rated this service scored it 4 out of 4.

The Figshare research data repository which facilitates data publishing, sharing and collaboration of academic research gained momentum towards the last quarter of 2020, with over 40 000 views in December only. By the end of 2020, the repository had 51 items with 74 787 views and 3 241 downloads.