Analytics @ Lancaster University Librarypresented at EPUG-UKI Exchange of experience day, 29 January 2014John Krugj.krug@lancaster.ac.uk

http://www.slideshare.net/jhkrug/epug-uki-lancaster-analytics

• Live with Alma since 14 January 2013• What we like about Alma Analytics• Problems• Moving forward

Introduction

• Basic reporting is fast• Interface is adequate• Data exploration is good• Analyses available via API call

– Very important, enabling merging with other sources of data• Lots of analysis is done by librarians rather than technical staff

– We did staff training tutorials, 1-2-1 and classroom based.– Some things that were hard are now easy

• E/P-journal expenditure by fiscal year. Very much easier in Alma, senior librarian made her own report. Very time consuming and tedious to generate from Aleph.

What we like

• Still getting to grips with the data model• Limit on data resulting from an analytics query that can be

downloaded – 64,000 rows. – A library refurbishment meant we wanted to merge usage data

from Aleph and Alma to manage stock in the transition. Alma data had to be exported in multiple runs. Painful.

– Why?• Some things that were easy are now hard.

– High Demand report

Problems

• Want to know on a day to day/week basis which items are in demand.

• Hold request analytics functionality is on the way.• Currently

– Export data, including ‘Recalls’ value, which is a cumulative count.

– ‘Subtract’ yesterdays (or a week ago) data from todays to see which items have experienced high demand in the past 24 hours (or week).

– Produce a html report.• In Alma, hold queue length is available in ‘Monitor Requests’.

But display cannot be sorted, export required

Problem – High Demand Reporting

• Different data format for results depending on whether download via GUI or getObjectAsXml, makes it awkward to develop in Analytics then use getObjectAsXml for production.

Problems

From the UI

< .... Stuff removed ..../><RS> <R> <C0>1042</C0> <C1>3778</C1> </R></RS>

Problem – data export format

From the API

< .... Stuff removed ..../><rowset> <Row> <Column0>0</Column0> <Column1>1042.0</Column1> <Column2>3778.0</Column2> </Row></rowset>

It’s a count of items and loans, why float values anyway?

• Fines data in Analytics – an ongoing analytics saga– Requirement – a simple list of patrons and their current debt

• First logged 27 June 2013, but was apparent to us much earlier, we spent too much time trying to work out what was happening, and has been rumbling on in one form or another ever since.

• We have to export all transaction data and compute a value for debt, presumably in a similar way to the Alma interface.

• Simply does not appear to be possible in Analytics despite an attempted fix. May be about to be fixed in Feb 2014 release?

– More info on the mailing list and Analytics in the community area if anybody wants to dig in a bit further

Problems

• Data availability, searchability– e.g. Item internal notes not available in Analytics but only via

Alma and spreadsheet export (technical and other limitations cited in case 00002273)

– Can’t search/filter on MARC fields, e.g 856 other than by 5 ‘Local Parameter’ fields only configurable by Ex Libris staff

– So, Ex Libris have ingested our data and say you can no longer analyse some parts of it!

– This is all inflexible, too much hoop jumping– Why?

Problems

• Daily updates– Promised since the early days, took forever to arrive, eventually

available end of October 2013, at least 9 months late.• Performance reliability

– Many timeout or reported ODBC errors by analytics, also seems to have been resolved by end of October 2013

Problems

• Not just Alma Analytics ……… looking for the bigger picture– Building usage, survey stats, Primo logs, ezproxy logs, Aspire data

and usage, student grading, …….– Local data generators,

• real time flash surveys, information point query statistics• in-library usage of physical stock (items left on tables)

• Alma Analytics (will be) used mostly – to generate aggregate data from Alma– data exploration and analysis development– export analysis data for use elsewhere

Moving forward

LDIV – Library Data, Information and Visualisation

Prototype flash survey recorder

• Using a Library dashboard – To replace a SharePoint site of spreadsheets– Integrate analysis data from Alma Analytics, gathered via API

with other sources of data– Tableau (?) (and probably other technology like d3.js)

• Loan by classmark analysis, data from Alma– http://bit.ly/1f8pOQm

• Ebook spend over the years, data from Alma– http://bit.ly/1fW0IJi

• ezproxy log analysis– http://bit.ly/1ecUL3V

…. and forward

• Some difficulties– Lack of daily updates. Cash reconciliation against Self Check

machines could only be caught up once a week.– Also made it difficult getting good indication of items in high

demand.• But, getting better with interesting development in the future

• Questions?

Conclusion & Questions