We recently catalogued the 100,000th record on our library system, and this was a news item on the Jesuits in Britain web page: https://www.jesuit.org.uk/news/heythrop-library-reaches-milestone-100-000th-record-catalogued! The record is a volume of multiple, themed issue of the Concilium journal, see https://hey.koha.openfifth.net/cgi-bin/koha/opac-search.pl?q=Host-item%3A(%22Concilium%209%20(1-5)%201973.%22).
Amelia Leventhal (Heythrop Library Cataloguer) catalogued the volume which included the 100,000th record, and reflected on reaching this milestone:
I am very pleased that I catalogued the 100,000th record in our catalogue. It serves as a great reminder of all we have accomplished this year as the library team. We moved to our new library management system ‘Koha’ in the summer of 2025 and have all been figuring out the best methods for cataloguing on a completely different interface. It also feels fortuitous that the book in question should be a journal in one physical volume with multiple separate issues. These types of volumes are the trickiest to catalogue as the cataloguer must create separate records for each issue and link them all together. So, the 100,000th book is representative of how far we have come in terms of our cataloguing abilities in Koha.
There is also another angle of looking at this record, and how we count how many things we have; Clemens Gresser (Heythrop Librarian) commented on this as follows:
The 100,000th record on our catalogue is not particular photogenic. However, it is a good example of why we cannot easily say how many items we have. As in this volume, which has 5 separately-published texts in one physical volume: do you count what we have here as 1 volume, or 5 items? Technically, one could talk here about five “discrete bibliographic entries”, but does this make sense if one does not whether some of these items are shorter publications, often bound in one physical volume?
This problem of how to count how many things we have in our collection gets worse if we think of our journals: some of our records for journals (of which we have many, with currently over 150 live subscriptions), might have one so-called bibliographic record and 66 volumes or journal issues attached to this record (The Heythrop journal started in 1960 and we are still subscribing to it; see https://hey.koha.openfifth.net/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=43765&viewallitems=1).
What we definitely know is that we have over 200,000 physical items, probably more in the region of 250,000, and that at least 50,000 book volumes are uncatalogued, and at least 30,000 to 40,000 journal issues/volumes have not been captured on our catalogue properly or fully.
Also, recently the Jesuits in Britain Archives (who have a reading room full of ca. 6,000 books), started cataloguing on our library system their books. There are currently 87 volumes catalogued, see https://hey.koha.openfifth.net/cgi-bin/koha/opac-search.pl?idx=&q=&limit=branch%3AARC&weight_search=1https://hey.koha.openfifth.net/cgi-bin/koha/opac-search.pl?idx=&q=&limit=branch%3AARC&weight_search=1. Also, before Christmas an enthusiastic Jesuit at St Beuno’s started cataloguing some of the books held in this retreat centre in North Wales: over 400 https://hey.koha.openfifth.net/cgi-bin/koha/opac-search.pl?idx=&q=&limit=branch%3ASTB&weight_search=1
Finally, we are in the process of adding over 1,000 records of the over 700 volumes which are part of the Heythrop Library’s historic collection, which were moved to Campion Hall, Oxford. The Heythrop Library team catalogues about 2,700 to 3,000 books every year, with at least 700 new books bought annually. It will take some time before all of our 200,000 volumes will be captured on our catalogue! As we do not know how many of these volumes are journal issues and volumes, and how many books are “left to catalogue”, the rest of our cataloguing could take us many more decades.
One more statistics we can share though is, the number of so-called item records on our catalogue. These are physical items which each have a barcode and an item record:
| Library | Journal | Off-site borrowable books | Off-site reference books | Reading Room borrowable | Reading Room Reference (includes latest journal issues!) | TOTAL |
| Heythrop Library | 24288 | 100124 | 8687 | 8211 | 4034 | 145344 |
| Archives Reading Room | Not captured yet | n/a | n/a | n/a | 98 | 98 |
| St Beuno’s Community Room Library | Included in total to the left | n/a | n/a | n/a | 618 | 618 |
| All items on Koha | 146060 |
Without having finished cataloguing all our materials we do not know how many volumes and discrete bibliographic items there are. If the 3 full-time Heythrop Librarians were to look at only 20 of these records again, it would take us over 2,422 days, i.e. over 6.5 years to look at each one.
What is absolutely clear though, is that having as many books in one catalogue which are owned by the Jesuits in Britain will help to understand which holdings are unique, and it will save cataloguing time to use the same system for copies held at different locations. Watch this space for us to give you an update every February…
AL & CG