NPL completed a floating study using Collection HQ. This groundbreaking research revealed that floating collections do not actually perform better but instead result in more unbalanced, under-stocked branch collections. Floating relies on the assumption that customers will return materials where they requested items be sent for pickup. However, we found that transit routes, work and shopping hubs, and convenience (for example, drive-through book drops), heavily influence where patrons actually return materials. They return materials at the easiest location – not necessarily their pickup locations. Therefore, material was being relocated to areas where there wasn’t actual demand and, consequently, circulating poorly.

In addition to this main finding, NPL’s study also revealed other needed “fixes”:

• Our most popular material was floating away from urban core branches, where patrons placed fewer holds.
• Entire subjects were being stripped from nonfiction collections, resulting in under-stocking.
• Customers at a few, large suburban branches benefitted most from floating because they placed the most holds and moved the most popular items.
• As we pooled titles at our busiest branches, other locations were going without popular, newer titles. We began using software that moved material based on prior demand, rather than customer drop-off habits.

NPL has discontinued floating, relocating and purchasing material based on circulation data and subject/author inventories at our 21 locations. Large systems with commuter routes to downtown, urban-core patron bases that place few holds, and branches of varying sizes can benefit from our findings. By using past demand to relocate underperforming material, we have increased print circulation by 4.3 percent, including 165,000 items that would otherwise have been weeded entirely. In addition to providing better customer service and better use of collection development funds, NPL’s study is also the first of its kind to provide this industry knowledge.