1. Telling Your Story With Numbers Annual Northwest Resource Sharing and Interlibrary Loan Conference Presented by Jill Wolf, M.Ed., Data Analyst - Brooklyn Public Library Materials prepared by Jill Wolf and Jeanne Goodrich. Portland, Oregon September 14 & 15, 2006

2. Agenda Data Collection –What do you want to know and how do you get it? Data Analysis – What does your data tell you? Data Presentation – How can you tell your story most effectively?

3. Why Collect Data? Measure progress Influence Directors Make resource allocation decisions Meet data collection requirements of  a grant project  state library/association/federal reports

4. Collect the Right Data Too little isn’t helpful Too much can be overwhelming The wrong data is misleading

5. Two Kinds of Data: Quantitative (quantity):  numeric  measures how much and/or  how often something happens Example:  Fill Rate  Turn around time  Number of borrows/lend per month or year

6. Two Kinds of Data: Qualitative (quality):  Data that is rich in detail and description  Includes data from surveys, focus groups Example:  User satisfaction surveys  Customer service surveys

7. Where Do You Get Data? ILS/ILL system Published reports, ex: demographic information from Census, PLDS Surveys Observation Self-reporting

8. Data Analysis reading the data

9. Data Analysis Techniques Compare - benchmark Use averages & medians Percentages Change over time - trends

10. Read the Data Look for:  Trends  Patterns  Highs and lows  Anomalies

11. Analyzing Use Actual Numbers Raw Numbers

12. Analyzing Use Percent Change

13. Trends

14. Patterns Suspended service during ILS migration

15. Comparative Data/Benchmarking Public Library Data Service (PLDS) Library Peer Comparison Tool  public, academic, school  National Center for Education Statistics  www.nces.ed.gov/surveys/libraries/ Bibliostat Connect/WebConnect  State, federal and PLDS statistics Cool! Google: “peer library tool”

16. Comparative Data/Benchmarking Click on chart symbol to view chart.

17. Comparative Data/Benchmarking

18. Understand average, median Average (mean): sum of all values divided by number of values Median: the value in the middle of the data series

19. Percentages Percentages show the relative size of two or more categories.

20. Percentages Examples  50 is what percent of 100? 50/100 =.50 or 50%  10 is what percent of 125? 10/125 =.08 or 8% OF means DIVIDE

21. Percentages Example  Beaver State University subscribed to 5,600 serials in 2005 but had to cut the subscription list to 4,725 in 2006.  This was a decrease of 16%. New Value -Old Value Answer/Old Value Answer x 100=x% 4725 - 5600 = -875 -875 / 5600 = -.15625 -.15625 x 100 = -16% (rounded up) In Excel -

22. Percent Change Last year I spent 18% of my materials budget on AV materials. This year I plan on spending 20%. What is the difference? Answer At first glance, you might think the difference is 2% - but the difference is 11%. (2/18 = 11) The dollar difference and absolute difference will also depend on the dollar amounts being talked about. In other words, 18% of x may be more than 20% of y. 20% of $10,000 = $2,000 18% of $50,000 = $9,000

23. Presentation telling your story “statisfaction”

24. Consider Your Audience Why are you presenting to them? What are you trying to get them to do? How do they prefer to see data? How do you tell your story most effectively?

25. Presentation Options: Narrative description Tables Graphs and Charts Maps Spreadsheets

26. Excel Is Your Friend Learn to use Excel spreadsheets and charts

27. Table or Chart?

28. Fishbone Diagram

29. Maps and Census Data

30. Column Charts 3-D Column Chart

31. Column Charts Stacked Column Chart

32. Column Charts Stacked Column Chart with Data Table

33. Pie Charts

34. Bar Charts Stacked Bar Chart

35. Dashboards

38. Resources Blogs  Juice Analytics http://www.juiceanalytics.com/weblog/ http://www.juiceanalytics.com/weblog/  Dash Board Spy http://dashboardspy.wordpress.com/ http://dashboardspy.wordpress.com/

39. Resources Books  Data Analysis with Microsoft Excel: Updated for Office XP (with CD- ROM) (Paperback) by Kenneth N. Berk, Partrick CareyKenneth N. Berk Partrick Carey

40. Resources Books  Excel Data Analysis for Dummies (Paperback) by Stephen L. NelsonStephen L. Nelson

41. Resources Websites  Colorado State Library and the Colorado Department of Education  http://www.lrs.org/index.asp

42. Contact Information If you have questions, please feel free to contact me at: Jill Wolf jillwolf1@comcast.net 503-307-1297