Who uses what? Visualising electronic resource usage by academic cohorts
VALA2022 E-Poster
Lachlan Young
- Data Analytics Librarian
- University of South Australia
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Abstract
In an era of shrinking budgets, academic libraries have to be able to justify the importance of their electronic resource spend using evidence. Traditionally we have been able to get an aggregate picture of the extent to which e-resources are being used across an institution. However, this aggregate usage may not fully reflect the importance of a resource within niche academic areas.
We present a project to incorporate user-identified e-resource access data from the OpenAthens authentication system into our institutional data warehouse. This project involved collaboration between the University Library, who obtain the raw data, and our Business Intelligence and Planning unit, who process the data into a usable model. Through this model, the data is de-identified and matched with our existing datasets that identify academic cohorts among staff and students. Using the University-wide Cognos data visualisation tool, the Library has created a range of interactive dashboards that highlight the relationships between e-resources and the academic areas that are making use of them.
The dashboards created by this project are available to all University staff, allowing them to be used for multiple purposes. Within the University Library, insights from the dashboards form part of our continuous review of subscriptions. When considering a resource for potential renewal or cancellation, we are able to see if usage of that resource is concentrated in a particular academic discipline or type of student. With this knowledge of who might be most affected by the decision, we can target our communications to relevant academic staff and gather feedback on the value of the resource within their discipline.
Academic liaison librarians are able to use insights from the dashboards as part of their promotional activities. We can provide lists of resources which are heavily used by particular units or particular programs, using this evidence to show that the Library is providing targeted support to these areas. We can show teaching academics the degree to which their students are engaging with scholarly resources, and show research academics the tools that their research degree candidates are relying on. We can also identify areas where resource usage is lower than expected, which could become candidates for additional promotion or expanded digital literacy training.
In the future we would like to encourage staff from across the University to explore the dashboards openly. By being transparent with our access data, we can help generate confidence that the Library budget is being spent wisely and well.
Biography
After a career spanning work in copyright, electronic resource management, reading lists and licensing, Lachlan Young became the inaugural Data Analytics Librarian at the University of South Australia in February 2020.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License