1. GATHERING AND USING
COMMUNITY DATA: MAKING
THE BEST DECISIONS FOR YOUR
LIBRARY
Marie Pyko, Public Services Director
Thad Hartman, Community and Strategic Services
Manager

2. AGENDA
INTRODUCTION
COMMUNITY DECISIONS
WHAT TYPE OF DATA
COMMUNITY DATA
COLLECTION AND USE
PATTERN DATA

3. AGENDA
INTERNAL DECISIONS
ORGANIZING AROUND THE
WORK
STAFFING LEVELS AND WHO
PROCESS IMPROVEMENT

4. WHY?
• Informed Decision Making
• Articulate Plans to Decision Makers
• Informed Evaluation

5. • Lies, Damned Lies, & Statistics
• 58.7% of all statistics are made up
• “Say you were standing with one foot in the oven and
one foot in an ice bucket. According to the
percentage people, you should be perfectly
comfortable.” - Bobby Bragan, 1963
• You can’t measure everything

6. • Start with a question, not an answer
• What is the question I’m trying to answer?
• It’s not the numbers, it’s what they represent
• Don’t prove, accumulate evidence
• Plan ahead
• Decisions will still need to be made

7. COMMUNITY
DECISIONS
What is the make up of the community
Where are they located
What do they need from the library

8. WHAT DATA IS ALREADY AVAILABLE
IN THE COMMUNITY
United Way community Survey
Community Resources Council
data
Heartland Visioning surveys
Safe Streets Coalition
State and local demographic
data
School data

9. UNITED WAY
COMMUNITY SURVEY

10. COMMUNITY RESOURCE COUNCIL
FREE AND REDUCED LUNCH
(INDICATOR OF POVERTY)
345 Seaman
372 Silver Lake
437 Auburn
Washburn
450 Shawnee
Heights
501 Topeka Public
Schools
2011
2013
32.83%
18.51%
2012
33.70%
20.32%
34.71%
18.24%
27.98%
31.96%
34.43%
32.05%
33.25%
34.17%
73.86%
75.36%
76.11%

11. COMMUNITY RESOURCES
COUNCIL DATA
State Assessment- Adequate Yearly
Progress
School District
2010
•321 Kaw
90.00%
Valley
•345 Seaman
87.00%
•372 Silver Lake
93.30%
•437 Auburn
96.20%
Washburn
•450 Shawnee
78.10%
Heights
•501 Topeka
69.70%
Public Schools
2011
2012
98.60%
93.80%
86.90%
92.50%
84.70%
96.50%
94.80%
90.90%
79.90%
85.70%
69.30%
64.30%

12. INTERNAL DATA

19. USING THE
DATA
SUMMER
READING:
REDUCE
SUMMER
LEARNING
LOSS
Partnership with school
districts to measure the
success of
summer reading program

20. SUMMER READING
• Pilot- 2010
• 1 school district with
students who use
Accelerated Readers and
Star assessments.
• School media specialist
agreed to compare the
students who participated
in SRP with students who
didn’t
• 75% of students who
participated maintained
or improved their reading
scores

21. SUMMER READING
PHASE 2
• Expanded partnership and
reached two additional
school districts.
• Schools used MAPS
• (Measurement of
Academic Progress)
• Same process we
provided names they
provided aggregate
scores
• Similar results

22. SUMMER READING
PHASE 3
• Partnered with biggest
school district to brand
summer reading with
similar reading
expectations of regular
school. IRead 20.
• More students and
schools reached the goal
in Topeka School District
than in the last 5 years.
• Results are pending on
data comparison

23. SUMMER READING RESULTS
INFORMED EVALUATION
Online software
• Gave us demographic
data for planning for the
future as well.
• Who are we serving and
who are we not
• Challenged some of our
assumptions

24. Summer Reading for Adults

25. Summer Reading Results
Goal: Increase the completion rate to at least 10% of the
student population in targeted Topeka Public Schools
(Lowman Hill, William’s, Ross, Scott, and Randolph)
Targeted School
2012
2013
Lowman Hill
6%
5%
William’s
6%
8%
Ross
3%
2%
Scott
3%
4%
Randolph
7%
15%

26. COMMUNITY ANALYSIS
Approach
A cluster is a group of individuals segmented by their
behavior and other traits. OrangeBoy Cluster
Development provides organizations the opportunity
to understand their customers' buying behaviors. We
help you segment your customers based on
transactional data, behaviors, lifestyle, and media
preferences. Clusters serve as the foundation for
decision making. This approach allows organizations
to build upon the strengths of their customer base
rather than assuming all customer needs are the

29. COMMUNITY ANALYSIS
Segment Findings
• 30 segments are represented
indicating significant diversity for
the size of the population
• The top two segments account
for just under one-quarter (23.9%)
of the population
• The top six segments account for
just over half (52%) of the
population
• The top 12 segments account for
75 percent of the population
• The remaining 18 segments
account for 21.6 percent of
population with an average of
1.2% each, indicating significant
fragmentation and diversity

31. Green Acres

32. Approximately 50% of library cardholders live less than 4 miles from
the library.

34. Characteristics
•23,999 people – 13% of the population
•70% are married with & without children
•Most are blue collar booms with children 6-17
•Median age is 39
•90% are white
Library Stats
•9,409 have library cards (39% of the them)
•They account for 10.7% of library customers
•They circulate 10.5% of items

35. Socioeconomic
•College educated & hard working
•70% employed in skilled labor, farming,
manufacturing, construction
•12%+ earn income from self employment
Residential
•A little bit country… these are rural residents
•Own single family homes with some mobile homes
•Own 2 or more vehicles… mostly domestic SUV’s,
trucks, and garden tractors

36. Preferences
•Home improvements: do-it-yourselfers
•Gardening: Vegetables
•Hobbies: hiking, backpacking, hunting, motorcycles
•Read: fishing, hunting & boating magazines
•Listen: news-talk radio
•Computers: own & use them, probably purchased by
catalog
•Shop online: clothes, videos, CDs, educational
software

40. COMMUNITY SERVICES PLAN
Bookmobiles
Library @ Work
Red
Carpet
Parks & Rec
Partnership
Fairs & Events
Lockers &
Dispensers
• Community
Partnerships
• Digital Branch
• Programming /
Speakers Bureau
• Restructuring /
staffing
• Material Delivery

41. INTERNAL DECISIONS
PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
• Spurred by major departmental changes
• BHAG
• Goals
• Develop baseline
• Do our staffing decisions follow our goals and priorities?
Do we organize around the work?
• What changes need to be made based on our goals,
how our service and staff are set up, and the quality of
service we are providing?

42. DIGITAL SERVICES
PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
• BHAG - Digital Services enjoys empowering our
customers to succeed by giving the best collective,
creative solutions to technology by being open and
flexible with each other.
• How successful are we right now?
• Staff surveys

44. Extremely
Dissatisfie Dissatisfie
d
d
Neutral
Satisfied
Extremely
Satisfied N/A
Averag
e
AV Setup in Meeting
Rooms
0
0
6
29
19
Speed of Resolution
1
4
10
41
18
3.96
How Effectively the
Problem is Resolved
1
1
15
38
19
3.99
How Friendly and
Courteous
0
6
23
32
12
3.68
Overall Satisfaction
0
3
13
43
15
3.95
17
4.24

45. Why?
INTERNAL DECISIONS
PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
SPECIAL COLLECTIONS
• Merging three units Special
Collections, Senior Services
and Reference
BHAG
• Special Collections will
connect people to their
stories by being the best,
first and most accessible
choice for genealogy and
local history.

46. PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
SPECIAL COLLECTIONS
Service Audit
• Who are our customers?
• Reference logs- 6 months
• What are they doing or
needing for Special
Collections?
• Work logs
• What are we doing with
our time?
• Collection and reference
questions and duration

47. Process Improvement
Special Collections

48. Work Logs

49. PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
SPECIAL COLLECTIONS
FOCUS ON LOCAL HISTORY AND
GENEALOGY
Service Plan
Goals and Objectives
Customer Service
Training
Programming and
Outreach
• Space (physical and
online)
• Collection
•
•
•
•

50. OTHER- INTERNAL
DECISIONS
STAFFING LEVELS AND WHO
• Reference
logs
• Customer use
patterns
• Questions
asked
• No logs
Books/music/movies/readers advisory
Business/jobs/non profits/taxes
Computer/internet/printer/scanner/wifi
Research/ill
Business phone
Resident phone
Public catalog instruction/unable to use
Customer Account/guest pass
Misc/study rooms/safety valve/programs
Ebooks/eaudio 1-10 min
Ebooks/eaudio 11-20 min
Ebooks/audio 21+
Ebooks/eaudio total
Fax/pos/copier/dispenser
Comments/small talk
all days
weekends
7596
1943
107
17
1918
445
1807
476
1261
204
274
57
229
57
1813
376
1121
227
126
16
42
5
6
1
174
22
1122
194
139
29
Questions
all days
1-10 mins
11-20 mins
21+
16991
520
50
weekends
3927
110
10

51. WRAP UP
AND
QUESTIONS
Thank You
Marie Pyko, Public Services Director
mpyko@tscpl.org
785/580-4560
Thad Hartman, Community and Strategic
Services Manager
thartman@tscpl.org
785/580-4511