In early April, I attended a CILIP North East event held at Sunderland University titled: Analytics, Wellbeing and Beyond: Library Initiatives at University of Sunderland. This was designed to showcase some of the different initiatives happening at their university library.
The upper floor of Sunderland University's David Goldman Informatics Centre
The Big Talk - Understanding the Student Experience - Leanne Young, Bradley Bulch and Laura Di Mauro
The first session looked at The Big Talk, an annual survey run by the library every January to March. The survey aims to gather feedback from students on their experience of the library, collecting both qualitative and quantitative data.
The survey questions change every year to reflect the library’s top 5 priorities for the upcoming year. Targeting the survey like this allows the library to gather detailed insights on student perceptions that can inform their short- and medium-term strategy planning. When the survey has run in Qualtrics, the data is harvested and visualised in a dashboard of analytics (more on this later…!). The team also strive to showcase the impact of any changes made off the back of this student feedback.
The most recent survey focused on: AI, spaces and behaviour within the library; personal reading habits; support from library staff; and finding resources.
Promotion happens via the library’s social media accounts and digital screens, lecture shout-outs and pop-up stalls across campus. Based on the response rates, which have grown in recent years, and academic engagement, The Big Talk appears to be a huge success and is now embedded into the university calendar.
Reading for Wellbeing - Helen Lawrence
The next session explored the newly-created reading for wellbeing collection, with the lunchtime tour including a visit to the dedicated space it has in the library. This is designed to be a quiet, screen-free place on-campus where students can relax and enjoy some reading for free.
The collection isn’t funded and is made up solely of donations from staff, with even the furniture being reclaimed from other university spaces. However, the books are still vetted for quality and relevancy, ensuring the collection serves its intended purpose of providing interesting and high quality books for enjoyment. After looking at the shelves, I was impressed by what was on offer (like some copies of those lovely Penguin clothbound books I often covet in Waterstones!).
The books aren’t catalogued, eliminating the need for students to issue and return the books. Running the initiative on trust and separating the collection and the space from the main library collection in this way is designed to avoid the stress students may experience around returning a book once overdue, and ringfence the collection as purely for enjoyment purposes.
Helen asked for suggestions on how feedback on the collection could be collected, given the lack of usage statistics. I thought they could place a physical suggestion box at the site of the collection and put slips next to the box or tuck them into some of the books. Students might be more minded to leave some feedback immediately upon finishing their reading session, without having to scan a QR code or remember to go online later, keeping it true to its screen-free ethos.
The Reading for Wellbeing space and collection at Sunderland University
From Data to Dashboard - Michelle Halpin
The final session looked at an ongoing project in the Collections and eResources team using analytics to source, connect and share data insights between library teams and faculty.
This was a really impressive session that highlighted how tools like Alma Data Visualisation, Power BI and Python can help libraries streamline their data reporting and help inform decision-making. For example, these tools helped the teams to determine cost per usage figures which could then be used to inform purchasing across the year and justify decision-making - something that's relevant for every library nowadays.
Michelle has begun to train staff in producing their own dashboards on things like usage statistics, which are then being used to support discussions with academics around renewals and cancellations of subscriptions. I also found it interesting how academics could access these dashboards themselves and play around with the metrics (within limitations set by library staff).
If you’re interested in analytics and the work going on as part of this project, I recommend you check out Michelle’s recent paper presented at this year’s SCONUL Spring Conference: From data to dashboard: blended approaches to engage our stakeholders and shape our services - SURE
Amy Austin
