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.

Library Website CiTi

Tammy Cummings, MLS
Center for  Instruction, Technology & Innovation

CiTi's Library Website

 The new  and improved library website is up and running. This new version of the website is linked to the CiTi website.  You will find it listed in the links column for each program at CiTi Library.  This will take you to the landing page and on this page there is a link (Visit the CiTi Library's  Google Site!) to the full library website.  You are welcome to bookmark the Google Sites Library page to take you directly to the page in the future.

Image of Library Website Landing Page

  The Library website is a place for Teachers and Students to find resources that support their learning.  There is a section for teachers that provides links to the teacher sign in pages for resources that we use here at CiTi.  The student section provides the links to the student sign in pages for the resources that students are most likely to use.  There are also resources to help students (and teachers) with their research needs and access to our ebooks/audio books.  You do not have  to be logged in to your CiTi Google account unless you need to view the restricted pages.  To view these pages just log in with your @citiboces.net account.

  The Library calendar is on the Home page of the Library website.  This calendar will enable you to see my availability for library lessons.  There is also the Library Schedule page that allows you to sign up for a time with the Librarian.  You will then receive a confirmation of that time from me.  This is the same form that teachers and students use to sign up for an ICE (Information, Curation & Exploration) session.  Once the Library space opens there is also a page for Library Sign In  where teachers will be able to see that their students did arrive at the library (They must have a pass).

The Library website is the best way to provide access to the digital library materials.  This website is updated on a regular basis and new items are added as they are added to the library.  Come visit the library website often.