Charting our course, Measuring our progress: Creating a Data Dashboard for Library Services
Presented by
- Rob O'Brien Withers (Miami University)
Description
Libraries and their administrations seek to demonstrate a return on investment made by our colleges or universities in our services and resources. Developing a dashboard which tracks and displays usage can be a helpful tool to assist with this task. This poster session will provide an overview of one attempt to develop a dashboard for circulation, document delivery, and information transactions. These experiences included: synthesizing data from multiple software / online services, each with its own idiosyncratic, and often inconsistent, interface; selecting tools for creating charts and graphs; selecting data to be charted over time and/or displayed in a summary view. The session is intended to benefit both those who work directly with data or from administrators who use data in decision-making. Take-homes may include: discussion of one model currently in use to develop models for an approach, we well as possible improvements; and an ability to evaluate pro’s and con’s of widely available services for manipulating and displaying data in order to select the most effective approaches.
About
Rob O’Brien Withers has been Access Services Coordinator at Miami University for 10 years. He previously worked as Assistant to the Dean / Electronic Services Librarian (1998-2010), Head of Systems and Technical Services (Western Maryland College, 1996-1998), and in several paraprofessional positions at the University of North Carolina (1991-1996). He has published in Against the Grain, College & Research Libraries News, College and Undergraduate Libraries, Library Cataloging, Acquisitions and Technical Services, and Reference & User Services Quarterly and presented at the American Library Association, Brick and Click Computers in Libraries, Educause Midwest, High Ed Web, Internet Librarian, LOEX, and NASIG.
