A Look at Book Checkouts! Library Impact Dashboard

 A Look at Book Checkouts! Library Impact Dashboards!

I have spent the last two years categorizing the picture book and reader book sections of my two libraries.  I have switched away from having the readers mixed in with picture books and NF books.  I moved them to their own section called Readers.  Both the reader section and the picture book sections are now sorted into categories.  I used the same categories for both sections.  The Readers have the Letter R added to the category label.  More about this in another post.

I have been spending time learning how to use Google Looker Studio.  It used to be called Data Studio which I was familiar with and I wrote several blog posts about that journey.  I decided to create a Library Impact Dashboard after seeing one at a conference and a virtual training session held during my Thanksgiving break.  It was worth the time!

I wanted to expand on this dashboard so I started researching what else Google Looker was being used for.  Two items stood out to me.  One a Mini Credentials board and a digital reading log.  Let’s talk about the reading log.

In both of my schools students are expected to read independently outside of school at least 15 minutes a day and some up to 20 Minutes a day.  They turn in reading logs.  I found an awesome example online.  I started to build my Google form to collect the data and the Google form to display the results.  I am worried about getting teachers to buy into this.  With Looker studio you need data to build your dashboards.  I will need to create some fake entries to get the board set up.  I’m not really into fake data so I have set this aside for a moment. Good news is that once it is set up I can delete the fake data and start collecting real data without damaging the dashboard.

Where else can I get data?  I looked at my Library Catalog and see a report for Loaned Items…… Now this report would have to be run each week or for me at the end of my 6 day rotation.  This is the biggest drawback of this report. If you don't pull the report each week you will loose out on data. All other reports that I have use so far you can pull at any time and even years later.

OPALS does not keep this information past the book being returned.  I learned about why in one of my Master Library Classes and its a good reason.  When I pull this report I will need to ensure student information is left out for this very reason. I do not want to do an end run around keeping a history of what students borrowed form the library.  OPALS has an option to leave out student information when running this report.  This report does give me some great information that I can create a dashboard with.

1. A list of books loaned out with no user information.

2. The Author names

3. Location of the books

1. Special Locations (Short Chapter books/series picture books & Reader categories)

2. The next two sections - the location field is blank and it is easy to add these after the report is pulled. 

1. Dewey - All the Nonfiction Books

2. Fiction - Novels - the longer ones - shorter ones are in Chapter Baskets

   

This gives me a look at the most popular authors & the sections of the library that get looked at the most.

1. Now to start asking questions

1. Why is an author more popular than others?  Is it the number of their books that I have?  Is it just because the author is popular?  What else can it be?

2. Which sections are seeing the most use?  Do I need to weed these sections or purchase more books for them?

The best reason to create a dashboard is to look at the data and ask questions.  The report looking nice is great but you want it to lead to questions.  I will be adding this report to the Library Impact Dashboard as a second and third page of the report.

Picture Book Genre

 Picture Book Genre

UPDATE:  I have also sorted the Reader section for students into the same groups.  I used the same stickers but added the letter R to identify the section to shelve in.

Many libraries have added Genres to their fiction collections and there are tons of resources online to help you complete this task.  There are however not many resources online for adding Genre to the Picture Book section of the library.  I started my journey at https://obxlibrarian.weebly.com/blog/easy-picture-book-genrefication  I was sad to see students just wandering around the picture book section when it was sorted by author only and spine out all the time.  Once I started to switch over to Genre topics for picture books I saw a change in the students when looking for books.  They took the time to flip through the front facing books to see what was in that section.  It was amazing!

1. The first step is to go through your picture books and pull out board books and step into reading type readers.  They make it difficult to shelve books because their size is so different from most picture books.  I created their own sections for these books.

2. You will need to select the topics (genre) that will work best with your collection and your students.  Here is a list of the topics I went with.

1.  ABC’s

2. Adventures

3. Animals (wild/zoo)

4. Author

5. Bears

6. Bugs

7. Career

8. 123’s

9. Dragons & Dinos

10. Farm

11. Friends and family

12. USA/Government

13. Pet Stories

14. Princess/Prince

15. Scary

16. School/Books

17. Sea life

18. Silly Stories

19. Sports

20. Holiday

21. Superhero

22. Trucks & Equipment

23. Video Games

The highlighted topics can be large sections.  I am looking into breaking them down into smaller sections.

Author sticker means to shelve by the author’s name.

3. I created stickers with the above labels on them along with clipart to match. I printed these on blank spine labels.  I placed the stickers on the top right corner of the book cover.  Choose what works best for you.

4. Now the work comes in.  Sort the picture books into piles based on the topics.  Then place the stickers on them.

5. How will you shelve the books now that they have stickers on them?

1. Spine out?  I do this for the large sections

2. Bins on the shelf.  I do this with small topics.  I prefer front facing books as much as possible

3. Larger bins on the floor to highlight a section/topic of the collection.

6. Holiday books have a spine label and shelved out of the way but still accessible to students.

NOTE:  I do end up with some overfull bins but that is only at the start and end of the year.  All other times the bins are half empty.

The following are examples of the genre stickers I created using clipart.  I am not claiming this artwork as my own.  Please use your own artwork or clipart.

It has been awhile since I posted!

Let's Keep Going!

Hello Everyone:

    It has been a busy couple of years.  The last time I posted it was my first year at my two school libraries in Binghamton City School District.  I was unboxing and weeding two elementary school libraries with lots of help from my fellow librarians.  I survived! 

    I have been working on a new Google Site to hold my lesson plans and all things I need to track as a professional librarian. :)  You can view my work here, but many things you won't be able to view until I am ready for them to be public.  Don't worry I won't keep them a secret for long.

I was happy to see that Data Studio is now Google Looker Studio.  I did a 4 part post about creating reading logs using Data Studio.  Now I am back creating new reading logs and even more important Library Impact Dashboards.  View here.  Since I have two school libraries I have two dashboards but I have created a blended dashboard to combine the stats to view the totals of both schools.  There is a limit to the number of blends you can create in Google Looker Studio.  I believe it is 5 but I have had issues after 4 blends.

I would love some feedback.

Tammy Cummings

Librarian