Analytics

About

Analytics, the activity of collecting, structuring and combining data into relevant and actionable information for organizations, is more than reporting.  Analytics focuses on finding the added value that data, such as assets and their patterns of use, can offer an organization, providing insight into their business and highlighting new opportunities in support of decisions or predictions.  As Library processes develop and become more complex, the ability to analyze the resulting data has never been more crucial.

The IGeLU/ELUNA Analytics group is not part of any single Product Working Group because the analytics data is created in multiple applications and some of those applications have their own analytics interface, as well.  The group’s cross-product view allows this group to cover broader topics from outside the perspective of any single product.  Specific areas of examination include data extraction, consistency, processing and enrichment, visualization and APIs.  Integration of other tools, general analytics, data warehousing are also relevant to the group.

A fundamental principle of this group is the Ex Libris users must benefit from openly specified, documented, and understood product data models, analytics data models, and processes for transforming product data into analytics data.  Therefore, all issues pertaining to how product data is extracted, enriched, stored, accessed, and used are pertinent topics for the Analytics group.  Whenever possible, members of this group also participates in ongoing development and planning.

Responsibilities include:

  • maintain a ‘key goals’ document
  • maintain an open use cases and scenarios document
  • discuss and promote the various uses of analytics in Ex Libris products
  • discuss and promote the use of analytics in ‘evidence-based-librarianship’
  • help ensure all relevant product data is available to use within the associated analytics products (for example, all relevant Alma data is available to the OBIEE Alma instance)
  • help ensure data created using Ex Libris products is readily available, ideally via APIs and through publishing / batch export routines so as to enable the use of special processing, such as institutional data warehouses, big data tools, visualization tools, and programming languages
  • encourage and provide some support for groups (geographical or interest-based) to hold analytics skills development days such as those that have taken place in the UK (Alma Analytics) and UNSW for sites in Sydney (Alma Analytics) and through the Ex Libris Northeast Users Group (Tableau).
  • maintain close links with the LOD, Interoperability, and Content groups and their communities
  • coordinate common problems and enhancement requests for the NERS process
  • maintain a repository on Google Drive for sharing information, tips & tricks, discussion, etc
  • maintain a mailing list for announcements and discussion

Contact the chair at analytics@igelu.org.

Membership

MembersRole
Davin Pate (University of Texas at Dallas)Coordinator
Amy Allenspach (University of Sydney)
Jennifer Bazeley (Yale University)
Margaret Briand Wolf (Boston College)
Michael Johnson (University of Minnesota)
Kristy Lee (State University of New York, New Paltz)
Rémy Lhoest (University of Liège)
Allison Powers (Harvard University)
Emily Singley (Boston College)
Rebecca “Becky” Smith (Memorial University of New Foundland)
Alice Tippit (Northwestern University)
Sam Tyler (Reading University)
Tony Wai (Macquarie University)
Leon Krauthausen (Free University of Berlin)Alma Liaison
Anna Subramaniam (Purdue University)ELUNA Primo Liaison
Laura Akerman (Emory University)Linked Open Data Liaison
Mehmet Celik (KU Leuven)Interoperability Liaison
Hong Ma (Loyola University Chicago)ELUNA Steering Committee Liaison
Wei Xuan (University of Manitoba)IGeLU Steering Committee Liaison