[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] circulation statistics

[Jason Etheridge]

[changing stats]
> Has anyone else noticed this?  How do you deal with your circulation stats?  (We are
> currently on vers 1.4.06)  Any input would be appreciated.

Changing stats could also be a sign that you're not reporting on what
you think you're reporting on.

There are two types of reports that people tend to run, those that
depend on counting/listing things at a specific point in time (when
the report runs), and those that count/list things based on dates
within the data itself.

Trying to do the latter where possible tends to produce more stable
(and IMO accurate results), but with such things as backdated checkins
and offline transactions, even those results can be mutable.  Deleting
data however, doesn't usually make a difference, unless you set up
your report thus, since Evergreen tends to not _really_ delete
anything, but merely marks data as being deleted.

In Evergreen, a renewal counts as a circulation (it's a separate row
in a database table) unless you explicitly filter it out (using the
various boolean _renewal fields on the circ).  In the trunk version of
Evergreen, there is a way to group the initial checkout and subsequent
renewals into one entity called a "circulation chain", and you can
report on those, with the start of a circ chain being the initial
checkout time, and the end of a circ chain being the checkin time on
the last renewal.

In trunk, we also start distinguishing between the effective checkin
time due to backdating, and the actual checkin scan time, and you can
report on those as well.

It may help to share specific reports (even if this is currently
difficult) so that others can scrutinize it and determine where the
pitfalls might lay.

-- 
Jason Etheridge
 | VP, Tactical Development
 | Equinox Software, Inc. / Your Library's Guide to Open Source
 | phone:  1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
 | email:  jason at esilibrary.com
 | web:  http://www.esilibrary.com