Rationale and Uses

Dashboards can be a powerful, impressive, and effective way to collect, convey, and publish relevant information about your academic library. They can help an academic library to establish its importance in the institution’s strategic goals, to demonstrate its value, to tell its story. Depending on your circumstances, they are well worth the investment of staff time and budget.

Factors impacting the rationale and uses of data visualization and dashboards:

• Why do you need data visualization/dashboards?
• Who is your audience?
• What are you trying to convey via data visualization/dashboards?
• What data do you need to collect?
• What is the best format to use?
• How much money/time will be invested?

Why do you need data visualization/dashboards?

• Internal assessment and development
• External communication (e.g., demonstration of value, show strategic alignment with institutional goals, distribution of statistics and information)

Who is your audience?

• Internal (e.g., library administration, librarians, other library staff)
• External / Institutional (e.g., institution administration, faculty and other teaching staff, students)
• External / Public (e.g., government officials and employees, journalists, members of the public)

What are you trying to convey via data visualization/dashboards?

• Basic data for public bookkeeping, access to information, or general interest
• Change over time (e.g, qualitative or quantitative)
• Promotion of library, collections, services, etc.
• Value of the library [e.g., contribution to research, contribution to teaching, non-academic value (safe space for students, social gathering place, venue for events, etc.)]

What data could be collected?

• See the “Data Sources and Collection” tab for more details
• Quantitative (e.g., gate counts, circulation numbers, contact hours, reference statistics, instruction rates, etc.)
• Qualitative (e.g., survey results, comments and feedback, etc.)

What is the best format to use?

• See the “Best Practices” tab for more details
• Consider your purpose, audience, and intended message
• Aim for simple, direct, and uncluttered data visualization/dashboards

How much money/time will be invested?

• See the “Tools and Technology” tab for information on the monetary and skill investments required for different data visualization/dashboards software

Public website

• Example: Dalhousie Library Library Assessment: Library Data and Fast Facts
• Available to all audiences
• Assessment, demonstration of value, library promotion

Promotional material

• Posters and brochures
• Available to all public, or targeted (e.g. to students, to a specific Faculty or department, etc.)
• Promote library services, programs, collections, etc.

Research and publication

• Use of images by librarians or library administrators as part of research for conference papers and publications
• Show basic data, change over time, etc., in the context of a research project involving the relevant data being represented
• Also promotes librarians as academic researchers

Presentations to institutional administrators

• Images in electronic (e.g. PowerPoint, .pdf) or printed (e.g. brochure, handout) formats
• For budget presentations
• For assessment and unit reviews
• Demonstrate value, alignment with institutional goals/strategy, present basic information needed for decisions

Internal (locked) website

• Available to librarians and library staff; may be made available to other institutional staff
• Assessment, information

Tay, A. (2016, November 18). 5 Reasons why library analytics is on the rise. [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://musingsaboutlibrarianship.blogspot.ca.

• Good, quick overview.

Cox, B., & Jantti, M. (2012, July 17). Discovering the Impact of Library Use and Student Performance. Educause Review.

• Using data to demonstrate “a strong correlation between students’ grades and use of information resources” as a way of showing how academic libraries add value.

Oakleaf, M, Whyte, A., Lynema, E., & Brown, M. (2017). Academic libraries & institutional learning analytics: One path to integration. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 43(5).

• Using data visualization to effectively demonstrate the library’s added-value and alignment with institutional goals around student learning.

Murphy, S. A. (2015). How data visualization supports academic library assessment: Three examples from The Ohio State University Libraries using Tableau. College & Research Libraries News, 76(9), 482-486.

• A basic rationale for using more advanced software to create more sophisticated dashboards (compared to basic data visualization); shows how effective this can be in promotion of collections and services, in developing collection-development priorities, and in allowing librarians to effectively use student survey results.