1) It is inward looking, which is very limiting and leads to false conclusions. Libraries are already very familiar with what their patrons want, and they do a good job of delivering. People wouldn’t remain patrons if this was untrue. Patrons use libraries because they value existing services, so relying on them as ‘trend’ indicators is like driving with your rearview mirror as a guide.

2) Consolidating national data will result in information that probably won’t serve individual libraries very well. Libraries make this mistake all the time; they rely on gross data when much more refinement is needed to provide meaningful insights. For example, the site says it will provide “emerging attitudes and trends in the young adult crossover market”. There is no such market; it’s a whole bunch of niche markets with key similarities and key differences. Notwithstanding the fact that YA patrons are a small segment of the YA population, how closely would a profile of YAs in my community match the one in yours? In central MA, we are:
- suburban communities
- working/lower-middle class
- technologically connected; virtually everyone has home computer & internet connection, plenty of tech gadgets; free wi-fi in most public and retail establishments
- probably not diverse in terms of race/ethnicity (don’t have stats, this is a personal observation)
- jobless rates among the lowest in the country
- literacy rates among the highest in the country
- education levels among the highest in the country
- low crime rates
- lower immigrant populations than in other parts of the country
- electorate votes Democratic

To chart a meaninful course forward, the library community needs to craft complex user personas to match the complexity of the communities it serves. And it doesn’t need to “roll its own” data and all the analyses. Skads of non-profit and for-profit entities produce high-quality metrics on this stuff and they’re freely available or could be purchased/negotiated for reasonable price. Part of my initial disappointment when I first began studying the library community was how little it relies on diverse, authoritative sources for its own management, operations & planning. Kinda like the plumber’s sink always being clogged, I guess.

3) The site is created by a for-profit entity (MediaSource, publisher of LJ) as a sponsorship service for its advertisers. This is an important consideration in your assessment.

4) And lastly, I’d offer my personal observation that with digital initiatives, the library ecosystem is comprised of great starters. If you view the initiatives 6mos after launch, the results are not-so-great. These are but a few examples: GeekTheLibrary that launched with some fanfare in mid-2009 and effectively hasn’t updated content/campaign since. PrivacyRevolution is a slightly different story. It went from a good idea at launch to an awful implementation.

I tried to point to my interpretation of this, but it has either been booted as spam or my work computer is messing up. Either way, here’s the deal:

15 percent of cardholders equals approx 20% of USERS that drive your real circ and stats. So, in San Antonio, that’s 158,949 people that are “heavy users”. That’s 10.5% of the total population uses the library on (at least) a bi-weekly basis. These people- even assuming that they only check out 1 item each every 25 times a year- account for 3,973,725 circs/year. That’s 62% of the library’s total circulation (6,374,109 in the year of these numbers)! Also, from the same source, that means they account for 93% of library visits (4,267,488 total)!!!! This is from a minority of cardholders/users and 11% of the population!