The SCONUL Annual Statistical Return forms a key part of the SCONUL membership package and is produced by the members for the benefit of the members to provide a detailed picture of the workings of a core university function. This data has proved invaluable to library leaders in strategic planning of their own services by:

• enabling institutions to benchmark their own performance year on year and their performance against their peers. The guidance on the statistical collection aims to ensure consistency in order to provide a robust data set that can be used in benchmarking.

• providing an annual insight into the collections, services and activities of the SCONUL member libraries, thereby supporting library directors and other senior staff in their strategic planning, decision making and internal advocacy.

• enabling the sector to identify trends and developments in the provision of library services nationally.

• A case study on how institutions can use the statistics is available here.

We are undertaking a review of our benchmarking statistics at the moment. More details of the work are available here.

The statistics are copyright of SCONUL which grants permission to its members to use the statistics within their institution. More information on the copyright and use of the statistics is available here.