Alma Analytics at University of Sheffield Presentation written by Andy Bussey and Alison Duffy Presented by Rachel Collier-Wilson & Fran Abbs IGeLU Conference, Oxford, September 2014

University of Sheffield Library, UK Over 25 000 students Nearly 6 500 staff Library has approx. 1.3 million print volumes and a lot of e-titles Very high use of self-service, especially in 24/7/365 Information Commons (including requests) Building more Information Commons space in a new building for Sep 2015 16/11/2018 © The University of Sheffield

This presentation… Looks at Analytics from business information provider, not systems We do not do programming/SQL to get our information from Alma Looks at how our business intelligence needs have driven our use of Analytics so far and what we hope to do Aimed at institutions who are not yet live with Alma or done very little Analytics work. But we want to link up with other institutions grappling with the same sort of issues we are. With our old system we did lots of SQL and Perl work to get information. We did have a business intelligence tool, which was useful, but it wasn't easy to get results to staff who required them. We don't have enough staff who could do Perl/SQL anymore, and we want more staff to have access to information. We have taken migration to Alma as an opportunity to review what business intelligence we gather and the reports we provide, based on what we actually use. 16/11/2018 © The University of Sheffield

We want Business Intelligence to... be at the heart of our processes help us monitor service levels to our customers allow us to monitor efficiency of processes help us analyse problems in our service and processes help us when designing new services to implement Point 1 is an ideal – not there yet. We have had information for points 2 and 3 for many years with our old system – probably too much information!!! However, it has not always been very joined up: had reports for various different external requirements (eg national stats, University assessments of service quality), key indicators for senior management, specific operational reports for individual sections. We now have an Alma Programme Board (members are Library Executive) who review requests for new areas of Alma work, projects for new services etc and they also approve new business intelligence work - aim is to be more co-ordinated and only create reports we actually need. We have had success with Point 4 in the past, especially in the fulfillment/circulation area. However, this hasn’t always applied across all services. Also, when we migrated to Alma, Analytics still had limitations which has prevented us doing this properly. 16/11/2018 © The University of Sheffield

Slide taken from a presentation by Asaf Kline, Ex Libris, IGeLU 2013 This slide is taken from Asaf Kline’s presentation at IGeLU 2013. We have repeated it here because it shows so well what we have done and what we hope to do. - we are still much better at analysing what happened and how it happened - we still find we are working on information for implementing new processes and workflows and predicting the future one problem when migrating to a new system is that trends are hard because the system may work in very different ways and make data hard to compare, plus you often make changes to services. Eg loans and renewals as measure of activity for print stock – with changes such as auto-renew the figures are not very comparable. Slide taken from a presentation by Asaf Kline, Ex Libris, IGeLU 2013 16/11/2018 © The University of Sheffield

Examples of where Analytics has helped us Data protection subject access request Users request all information about themselves held at the University Fund spending Monitoring spend of funds Link Sheffield Alma Production SAML Link Data protection subject access request In UK, Data Protection Act allows an individual to request a report of personal information about them that is held by an institution. This is a legal requirement. Follow link From Analytics menu, select “Data Protection Report” Enter username “ANDY_TEST” and Apply Repeat for tab “Data Protection Circulation Details” In the past we had to run Perl scripts to get all of the information. If changes were required, then programming/SQL was needed. A lot easier now. Can export data. Fund spending reports We closely monitor spending of funds to ensure we spend up during the year, otherwise we lose the money. Our Faculty librarians need timely access to this data. They can now easily get access to this themselves, and senior management can easily see a summary picture to enable them to target where problems might be. From Analytics menu, select “UoS Acquisitions” Show target reporting then some faculties Sharing reports – in Community/Reports/Sheffield. It might be nice if these could be subject-based. Reports can be shared, but it doesn’t really help build a community. Link Follow link to log in to Alma *** Maybe copy screenshots as back up 16/11/2018 © The University of Sheffield

Example of where we have had problems Monitoring usage of print stock In old system, loans (i.e. issues + renews) were key indicators Change in service (e.g. auto renew) has changed this Requests now even more important for us Requests in Analytics has been problematic Link Sheffield Alma Production SAML Link We used to use issues + renewal counts (which we called loans) as essential indicators of how material was used. This gave overall patterns of business across library sites and specific information about usage of titles. Now that we have auto renew, renewals do not indicate usage as much because items can be renewed constantly. Our reservations (i.e. hold requests) service was improved several years ago. We now allow requests of not on loan items and we fetch them from the shelves. We have always monitored overall request numbers in order to be able to provide the resources to run this service. However, with auto renew, requesting has become a critical way for users to get access to items on loan and therefore they are a good indicator of demand for items. When we went live with Alma, hold requests were not available in Analytics at all. They became available in April, but only really became properly useful in July after collaboration between Ex Libris and several customers. No historical data is available before April at all. This has meant that we have no idea how the requests service has performed during the first year we have used Alma. Alma’s requests operate differently to our old system, but we don’t know if this make it better or worse, or no difference. We also have not been able to get good usage information on items. The changes to the system also mean that our staff who do promotion, relegation and weeding of stock need to think about new types of report to get the information they need. *** PROBLEMS IN ONLINE ALMA THAT MEAN WE REQUIRE ANALYTICS *** *** *** PROBLEMS IF NO DATA IN ONE AREA THEN COMBINED REPORTS MIGHT FAIL Requests reports This is still in early development Follow link to Alma From Analytics menu use “UoS Requests” Heavily reserved items tab – top reserved items Outstanding requests - *** WHAT DOES THIS SHOW *** Careful cos of personal data Overview of requests – pick a year 2014 *** Monitoring performance and time to collect for user Total Number of Requests is new 16/11/2018 © The University of Sheffield

What next? Building the Diamond collection – identifying high-demand titles Team-level analytics SCONUL Statistics – UK community collaboration? Diamond Identify high demand items to build a new collection of 10,000 items closing a site – identifying items for relegation/withdrawal – problem can’t currently report on items with 0 loans within Team level analytics So far been an ad hoc approach. Systematically look at each functional area of the library to identify MEANINGFUL reports – what is really needed. Establish a core set of reports to meet the needs of each section to support business needs SCONUL - Standing Conference of National and University Libraries - is the membership organisation for all academic and national libraries in the UK and Ireland. Annual questionnaire requesting stats on all aspects of library service (no. of print/electronic titles held, numbers of loans, etc). As the questions are common to all UK academic libraries we hope to work on this in collaboration with other members of the UK Alma community. 16/11/2018 © The University of Sheffield

Analytics issues Lack of request information Shared dimensions User statistical categories Data availability often unreliable Field names sometimes different in Alma and Analytics Lack of request information has been a big issue for us because of the size and importance of that service at Sheffield. We will have to wait another 12 months to get good data on how that service is performing. Often can’t combine fields from different subject areas, but it is not very predictable. The Design allows you to bring fields together, but then the report fails. User statistical categories have been a real problem. Because there is no University department field in the user record, we have had to use stat cat to record this. However, this field has been unusable in Analytics until very recently. Data is supposed to move from live Alma into Analytics overnight. However, there have been periods when this has been very unreliable and data often takes very much longer, or does not appear at all some days. Because we are using Analytics for some operational reports, this delay brings problems. 16/11/2018 © The University of Sheffield

Links with other institutions It has been good to be in touch with other institutions about Analytics issues It is possible to share Analytics reports between institutions The UK will have a Special Interest Group on Analytics, but there are plenty of issues common to institutions in different countries Encourage everyone to use the lists as well Sharing reports Training Contact details ***** 16/11/2018 © The University of Sheffield

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