Beyond the numbers: creating actionable data using Alma Analytics dashboard
Aleksandra Petrovic, University of Auckland

Using analytics to inform relegation of print resources (to off-site storage) and retention (on main shelves).

Alma analytics lets you create very detailed reports but a fair amount of work, especially with data cleaning and analysing to get 100% accuracy. A lower accuracy option using the dashboard would be much quicker. Visualisations they used included:

• Overview by subject view showed how many items no usage, low usage, medium usage, high usage in different subjects based on checkout history.
• Overview of usage by publication year bands
• Overview of usage of possible duplicates in different subjects
• Overview weeding reports that could be more closely investigated
• Overview of books needing preservation
• Quick stats eg monographs count, zero uses, low uses, over 10 years old, possible duplicates – per library

Weeding parameters:

• publication year
• Alma usage
• accession year
• historical usage
• possible duplicates

(Other libraries might also consider value, authorship (eg by own institution’s authors), theses (irreplaceable), donations/bequests.)

Different methodology types eg soft methodology would give a number of “soft retain”, “soft relegate”. Could improve with weighted indexes among other options.

Q: Will you share reports in community area?
A: Yes, though some are very specific to Auckland so can’t promise they’ll automatically work.

Q: Are you using Greenglass with this approach?
A: Using this by itself.

Q: Ex Libris have released some P&E duplication reports – how do you approach risk if an electronic item is in an aggregator collection (and might disappear…)?
A: Excluded all electronic items from dashboard as it needs more information about subscribed vs owned. This is a next step…