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.