Library Analytics Toolkit

Tools to enable libraries to understand, analyze, and visualize the patterns of activities, including checkouts, returns, and recent acquisitions, and to do so across multiple libraries.

Benefit: library collections staff

Kim Dulin, Associate Director for Collection Development and Digitization, Harvard Library Innovation Lab, Harvard Law School Library

Carli Spina, Emerging Technologies And Research Librarian, Law Library

March 2012 Update

In this phase of the Library Analytics Toolkit project, the team has been focusing on developing a collection development focused tool to visualize collection data to support collection development and acquisitions. The Toolkit will also be of use in circulation as it will allow users to visualize circulation over time. The Toolkit will take the form of an interactive webpage which will give users the ability to view trends overtime using the currently available data, which is from 2002 to present, and visualize collection development and use in new ways. The data can be navigated by keyword, which is based on the item’s primary subject heading in HOLLIS. We have collaborated with our designers to create a logical and pleasurable user experience. We believe this initial investment in a clear interface will help ensure the longevity and viability of the product. The final product will be open source software developed primarily using Javascript and D3.js, making it possible for the Toolkit to later be expanded to encompass other types of library data. The project is slated to be completed in the next several weeks and at that time it will be available for use throughout the library community. We look forward to sharing the Toolkit with the whole Harvard Library community and getting feedback on it from users.

Recommendations

May 2011 Update

Since our first update, we have completed our initial round of meetings with people around Harvard’s many libraries, archives and special collections and have identified other institutions who have developed statistical dashboards. We plan to use the information collected through our meetings and research to develop a brief summary of common current practices for statistics and recommendations for how the library analytics toolkit can be designed to fit into existing workflows and enhance current statistical practices. The completion of this report will give us an opportunity to coalesce what we have learned through our project and will shape our proposal for the second phase of the project.

April 2011 Update

The Library Analytics Toolkit plans to create a new way for librarians to visualize their data and create visual reports of this data using a new data dashboard we will develop. In order to achieve this goal, we must first determine what data and statistics are currently collected and used across a wide range of collections so that we can meet user needs and, hopefully, facilitate new and creative types of data collection and comparison. To this end, we have been meeting with people across libraries, archives and special collections, and also across a wide array of job functions, to see how this toolkit could best serve them. Through this process, we have gathered useful information about the priorities of different collections and the key types of statistics that users would most like to be able to see. We have also learned about the current collection techniques employed at these collections so that we can ensure that this toolkit will be able to make use of data that is currently being collected without requiring the adoptions of new collection methods.

Download the proposal: