Pulling data from several different sources and making sense of all this information is a significant hurdle for academic librarians. Yet, librarians must be able to do this effectively not only to make sound, evidence-based decisions about their use of campus resources—but also to meet federally mandated reporting requirements.

As academic librarians are well aware, U.S. colleges and universities must go through rigorous annual data reporting procedures. For instance, any postsecondary institution within the United States that participates in federally funded student aid programs must use the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics to report on their student enrollment, staffing, and use of campus resources—including their library expenditures and circulation of materials.

For campus libraries, IPEDS collects information such as the number of books, media, serials, and database collections they possess in both physical and electronic formats; their circulation of physical items and usage of electronic materials; their use of interlibrary loan services; and their library expenditures. (Institutions with annual library expenditures less than $100,000 are only required to report on their collections, circulation, and use of services.)

Libraries that participate in the Association of College and Research Libraries’ Academic Library Trends and Statistics Survey, a national benchmarking initiative, must compile and report on similar information. Although ACRL has made it easier to complete the two surveys at the same time, gathering the required information is still a cumbersome process that must be completed every year.

Burdens on library staff

This data collection can be overwhelming for librarians. It typically requires pulling data from a variety of different sources and then manually organizing this information into spreadsheets, which is a very time-consuming process.

To assemble the required information, librarians must comb through data from their integrated library system (ILS) software, as well as other platforms. These additional sources might include an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, a student information system (SIS), an Interlibrary Loan (ILL) system, and platforms that collect information on the use of electronic materials, such as COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources) or Google Analytics.

 

For years, academic library staff have expressed concerns about the burden this process entails. “IPEDS collection is a nightmare,” said one respondent to a request for public comments about the process from the Office of Management and Budget. “The reporting process of IPEDS is very time-extensive and requires a full-time position [just] to collect the data,” wrote another.

A 2022 survey conducted by Library Journal and EBSCO confirmed that a lack of time is the No. 1 barrier to data collection among campus libraries, with 53 percent of respondents saying this was a problem for their institution.

“From my perspective, one of our biggest pain points [is] staff time,” says Larry Treadwell, Dean of Libraries at Fayetteville State University. “The more we can find ways to reduce our staff load and spend our time analyzing the data rather than going to each different [data source, the better].”

Strategies that can help

Completing the annual reporting required of academic libraries can be challenging, but here are a few strategies that can help ease this burden.

•    Leverage automated processes. Campus libraries need a simple, automated way to collect the necessary information from multiple sources without encumbering library staff with manual data collection.
•    Use data visualization tools. Identifying missing or incomplete data is much easier to do when the information is organized and displayed in a graphical, highly digestible way. Using data visualization tools can help library staff quickly uncover missing data, which further aids in the completion of annual reports.

Panorama from EBSCO is a modern library analytics platform that can help. It automates the collection and reporting of library data and presents this information in a highly visual, easy-to-understand format that reveals key insights.

 

Panorama collects information from disparate sources such as ILS, SIS, and ERP software and merges different data sets into one platform for easy analysis and reporting. For instance, the platform includes an IPEDS Data Dashboard that automatically pulls the information required for institutional IPEDS reporting into one simple location, saving staff countless hours of work. What’s more, Panorama helps libraries gather the data needed for benchmarking and reporting to ACRL and other national standards organizations as well.

“This is a tool we have needed for some time,” says Teri Oaks Gallaway, Executive Director of the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC). Using Panorama “will allow us … to analyze and communicate our data findings to stakeholder groups easily.”



 

SPONSORED BY