Kara says: In the spring of 2015, as chair of ALA’s Preservation and Reformatting Section, I was searching for a good topic for the Preservation Forum.  Having completed several preservation surveys in the past year, some well-crafted and others less so, I found myself wondering why folks fill out preservation surveys (and why others don’t.)  How do preservation statistics get used?  It’s a deeply personal question for me, because I know that my job and my growing set of preservation services is a result of comparing our preservation statistics with that of our colleagues back in the days of the ARL Preservation Statistics.

So, last spring, I sent out a survey to see how folks were using their statistics, to seek out new creative ways to utilize statistics here, and to help encourage those reluctant to spend the time to gather stats.

I gave a presentation on the results of that survey in June at ALA at the Preservation Forum.  You can view it here: Preservation Metrics 2015

As you can see, folks have used their data to do a number of things.  How might we apply some of those ideas here?