ABSTRACT
A library’s activities can be described in a professional manner only by collecting correct and sufficient hard data. But this is not all. According to Menzul (1993), “A mere reporting of the service statistics without meaningful analysis or interpretation relative to the served populations would have little value in helping us to bring our message across to management”. Yet all too often library staff are not really familiar with statistical procedures for data collection, analysis and interpretation. This book is written to help them in these matters. We intend to present the necessary techniques in a clear way. All topics covered in this book are described using many real-life examples from librarians’ experiences. No mathematical or statistical background is assumed, and this book covers even the most elementary aspects of “library mathematics and statistics”.
