Statistical overview: Department of Library Services (DLS) emerging trends

2020 was a bizarre year which forced the academic year to end in the first quarter of 2021. The 2021 academic year resumed on the 15th of March 2021. This means that students returned to campus later than usual, influencing our service statistics tremendously. As will be outlined next, the first quarter of 2021 is quite different statistically when compared to the previous two years, characterised by a decline in most usage statistics.

As a result of this, there is a significant increase in the usage of e-books. The DLS continued to expand access to the e-Book collection in 2021. The use of e-Books is higher than in the two previous years, with an 82% increase compared to the first quarter of 2021. There is a notable shift from physical books to digital books as the usage of print books shrink by 93% in the quarter under review. Though the library still bought physical books in 2021, the priority has been given to the digital collection.

As libraries started operating, the library saw a rise in study space bookings towards the end of March 2021. A total of 1 122 bookings were honoured in the first quarter of 2021, with 111 bookings for the Merensky 2 Research Commons and 9 for Veterinary Science Research Commons. As a result of students slowly returning to campus, enquiries at our information desks started to rise. Interestingly, library users still prefer to request assistance using more traditional means, such as email, telephone call, or in-person interaction, as opposed to our more digital platforms, such as Chat to Librarian, Ask a Librarian, and WhatsApp. Overall, enquiries from all platforms declined in the first quarter of 2021 compared to the previous two years due to the fact this was a shorter quarter than normal.

Pages digitised greatly increased after the first quarter of 2020 and continue to increase in 2021. Since physical books are restricted due to current Covid safety regulations, users can request sections of physical books in the library to be digitised (in line with copyright requirements). Some of these digitised sections are added to ClickUP for broader access to students. As a result, the pages created and referenced added to ClickUP keep rising, with an 11% increase in the pages created and 14% increase in references added. 

Library users continue to rate the library service highly using our Rate Us platform, where we received day-today feedback from our users as they interact with the library. Should users have any issues, this platform ensures an immediate response to the challenges they face. The library has seen a rise in staff enquiries (both short/directional and subject-specific enquiries) than from undergraduates and postgraduate students during this quarter. There was also an increase in staff training attendance in the first quarter of 2021 compared to the first quarter of 2020. However, postgraduate students attended more training than the other user groups.