Library Facts 2021-22

Each year, we gather statistics for the Association of College and Research Libraries and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) surveys. Here are some highlights from our 2021-22 fiscal year.

Employees

  • Librarians (FTE): 20
  • Support staff (FTE): 33
  • Student assistants (FTE): 11

Use and services

  • Library personnel handled 5,461 research queries in person, by phone and online.
  • Librarians provided 485 instructional sessions and workshops reaching 6,116 participants.
  • Annual gate count was 161,829 with 3,236 people coming into the Libraries in an average week.
  • 20,149 physical items were checked out during the year (not counting renewals).
  • WMU Libraries borrowed 4,331 items for WMU users from other libraries and lent 11,479 from our collections to other libraries.
  • Libraries' website was visited 99,424 times.
  • WMU users retrieved 707,545 articles and 654,795 e-books and media items.
  • There were 2,175,158 downloads worldwide from WMU’s institutional repository (ScholarWorks).
  • 707,810 pages were printed in the Libraries.
  • Users logged in to public computers 49,104 times.

Collections

  • Physical books (titles): 1,168,125
  • Electronic books: 1,120,016
  • Physical serials (titles): 26,097 (reporting standard is now number of titles instead of number of items)
  • Electronic serials: 137,919
  • Online databases: 735
  • Physical media titles (audio/visual): 101,684
  • Digital media titles: 249,085
  • Items held in WMU’s institutional repository (ScholarWorks): 63,515

Unless otherwise stated, these statistics cover all branches of Western Michigan University Libraries.