The total of record count is sometimes useful when showing up on the list view or in the customzed pagination. It’s a bit hard to get it directly from the list xml data (not sure whether it’s possible). The following is an easy approach.
First, you’ll need to modify you view to include the ID column. Then under the totals, set Count for the ID column in the dropdown.
Now save the view and open it in SharePoint designer, click Customize XSLT>Custom Entire View
Notice that in the xslt we have the following defined:
You can now define a global variable for the total count of records
This global variable can be used for customized pagination as well as just displaying the count of records on the page. After all this done, you can hide the id column by modify the xslt a bit.