Capturing business intelligence required for targeted marketing, demonstrating value, and driving process improvement

Abstract

The University of Wollongong (UOW) has undertaken an innovative and collaborative research project to demonstrate the value that can be provided by academic libraries. The tool developed, the "Library Cube", is a data warehouse linking student borrowing and use of electronic resources to students' academic grades and demographic information. The project is different to other institutions' efforts to link usage to student outcomes, in that the Library Cube is not a one-off research project, but is now an ongoing part of UOW's systems and performance reporting and represents a fundamental shift in evaluating the student experience through the integration of discrete systems and datasets.The Library Cube demonstrates a new direction for evidence-based research. Analysis enabled through the Cube has revealed a very strong relationship between library usage and students' academic performance. This information will improve UOW Library's ability to demonstrate value to clients and stakeholders. The Library Cube has also delivered some anticipated and unexpected findings on the relationship between social variables (such as gender, age, and citizenship) and library usage behaviors; and in doing so has also identified potential target audiences for Library promotions and engagement strategies. ABSTRACTThe University of Wollongong (UOW) in New South Wales, Australia, has undertaken an innovative and collaborative research project to demonstrate the value that can be provided by academic libraries through a tool called the 'library cube'. The library cube consists of two major components: a backend system containing a multidimensional data warehouse linking student borrowing and use of electronic resources to students' academic marks (grades); and a frontend system that allows users to quickly and easily create cross tabulated data views, such as average student marks by frequency of library resource usage and gender.The project is different from the efforts of other institutions to link usage to student outcomes, in that the library cube is not a isolated research project, but is now an ongoing part of UOW's systems and performance reporting. The library cube represents a fundamental shift in evaluating the student experience through the integration of discrete 2 systems and datasets. It has revealed a very strong relationship between student library usage and academic performance. This information will improve UOW Library's ability to demonstrate value to clients and stakeholders. The library cube has also delivered some anticipated and unexpected findings on the relationship between social variables, such as gender, age, and citizenship, and library usage behaviors; and in doing so has also identified potential target audiences for library promotions and engagement strategies.

Understanding Patterns of Library Use Among Undergraduate Students from Different Disciplines

“…Arts and humanities students are not particularly heavy library users, as they have been found to be in earlier work (De Jager, 2002;Nackerud et al, 2013;Maughan, 1999); in fact, they are lower users than social scientists on most dimensions. Earlier research found computing and engineering students to be relatively low users of library resources (Kramer & Kramer, 1968;Bridges, 2008;Cox & Jantti, 2012;Nackerud et al, 2013), although Chrzastowski and Joseph (2006) found that graduate students from the physical sciences and engineering used online resources more than graduates in other disciplines. Again, our results show that although students from the computing and engineering discipline are low users (relative to the control group of social sciences), they are not particularly different from some other disciplines, such as arts, in this respect.…”

“…Chrzastowski and Joseph (2006) use high-level categories in order to fit with their university's organisational structure, but Whitmire (2002) is forced to exclude the life scientists at her institution from her analysis, because the theoretical structure of the study does not allow for them. Studies have also looked at different groups of library users: undergraduates (Wells, 1996;Bridges, 2008;Cox & Jantti, 2012), postgraduates (Chrzastowski & Joseph, 2006), and researchers at all stages of their careers Bulger et al, 2011;Housewright et al, 2013;Tenopir & Volentine, 2012). Finally, they have adopted various definitions of what constitutes library use -from gate entries to e-resource usage, book borrowing to searching behaviours -to explore how different groups engage with the library and its services.…”

“…But in other instances, different ways of defining subjects and user groups can lead to confusion in understanding exactly how findings may apply in other settings. For example, many studies found engineering students to be the least engaged library users across resources (Kramer & Kramer, 1968;Bridges, 2008;Cox & Jantti, 2012;Nackerud et al, 2013). However Chrzastowski and Joseph (2006) found that graduate students from the physical sciences and engineering used online resources more than graduates in other disciplines.…”

“…So, for example, Wong and Webb (2011), Cox and Jantti (2012), Stone and Ramsden (2013), and Soria, Fransen, and Nackerud (2013) have looked at various measures of library usage to understand their relationship with final degree outcome. All of these studies have demonstrated a statistically significant relationship, though they hold back from inferring what kinds of cause and effect mechanisms may be at work.…”

Library resources, student success and the distance-learning university

“…Discussions with colleagues and a review of the other approaches, notably the work by the University of Wollongong on the Library Cube (Cox and Jantti, 2012), identified several methods that could be used for the statistical analysis of the data.…”