Library Data

CCA Libraries record data related to our collection, how it’s used by the college community, and the services we provide. The data shown here provides insight into some of the work we do.

Don’t see what you’re looking for? We keep many more data sets, contact the Systems Librarian Eric Phetteplace to see if he can find the information you need. If you’re looking for data on California College of the Arts as a whole, the Data@CCA site has details relating to our data governance, common data dashboard, and institutional metrics.

Visualizations & Presentations

Reference Statistics Steamgraph Reference Statistics Steamgraph

See how the time of day or week of the semester affects the libraries' reference services. The beginning of the semester is very busy, especially with directional questions from new students. Interestingly, the week of Thanksgiving is generally not busy but had a surprising number of reference questions (ones which involve research assistance).

Catalog Facets Treemap Catalog Facet Treemap

See the usage figures for the left-side facets in the library catalog which people use to refine their searches. Practical ones like location and item type are used far more often than topic-narrowing choices like subject or author. You can click a facet on the treemap to see what the most popular selections …

For our internal CCA Libraries' staff meetings, librarians create presentations of interesting and informative statistics from the past year or semester. Here are several of our slide decks:

The data presented may not be understandable without the complete context of the presentation. You can contact Eric Phetteplace with any questions you may have.

Public Services

We record whenever we answer a patron’s inquiry, categorizing its general nature: “reference” is a research question, “service” questions relate to services that the libraries provide, “technical/computing” is assistance with computers or technology, and “directional” is simple directions to campus locations.

Circulation

This table below shows circulation of items via the library catalog by academic year. Items include not only books but videos, magazines, academic journals, material samples, and mixed media objects.

The substantial decline evident in the 2019-21 columns is attributable to the COVID-19 pandemic and the corresponding campus closure.

Meyer Library, Oakland2018-192019-202020-212021-22
Books5,0662,746228863
Periodicals9034317
Videos425282740
Other materials353025
Equipment14411413
Meyer subtotal5,7603,206241928
Simpson Library, SF2018-192019-202020-212021-22
Books7,9186,1973223,055
Periodicals306228364
Videos165116155
Other materials9397193
Equipment6455029
Simpson subtotal8,5466,6933273,296
Materials Library22281073
Annual totals14,5289,9805684,297

Collection Size

The tables below show the size of the CCA Libraries' collections as of January, 2023.

TypeNumber of TitlesNumber of Items
Archival Materials3,5324,843
Books54,40858,462
Digital/Electronic Books223223
Material Samples7232,350
Periodicals37914,099
Reserves342
Videos2,7364,086
Other590773
Totals62,59484,878
TypeOrders (past year)  
Books98  
Periodicals1  
Reserves0  
Videos1  
Other3  
Total orders 103