Experiences of Alma Analytics at Lancaster University

1. Analytics @ Lancaster University Library
presented at EPUG-UKI Exchange of experience day, 29 January 2014
John Krug
j.krug@lancaster.ac.uk
http://www.slideshare.net/jhkrug/epug-uki-lancaster-analytics

2. Introduction
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Live with Alma since 14 January 2013
What we like about Alma Analytics
Problems
Moving forward

3. What we like
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Basic reporting is fast
Interface is adequate
Data exploration is good
Analyses available via API call
– Very important, enabling merging with other sources of data
• Lots of analysis is done by librarians rather than technical staff
– We did staff training tutorials, 1-2-1 and classroom based.
– Some things that were hard are now easy
• E/P-journal expenditure by fiscal year. Very much easier in
Alma, senior librarian made her own report. Very time consuming
and tedious to generate from Aleph.

4. Problems
• Still getting to grips with the data model
• Limit on data resulting from an analytics query that can be
downloaded – 64,000 rows.
– A library refurbishment meant we wanted to merge usage data
from Aleph and Alma to manage stock in the transition. Alma
data had to be exported in multiple runs. Painful.
– Why?
• Some things that were easy are now hard.
– High Demand report

5. Problem – High Demand Reporting
• Want to know on a day to day/week basis which items are in
demand.
• Hold request analytics functionality is on the way.
• Currently
– Export data, including ‘Recalls’ value, which is a cumulative
count.
– ‘Subtract’ yesterdays (or a week ago) data from todays to see
which items have experienced high demand in the past 24 hours
(or week).
– Produce a html report.
• In Alma, hold queue length is available in ‘Monitor Requests’.
But display cannot be sorted, export required

6. Problems
• Different data format for results depending on whether
download via GUI or getObjectAsXml, makes it awkward to
develop in Analytics then use getObjectAsXml for production.

7. Problem – data export format
From the API
From the UI
< .... Stuff removed ..../>
<rowset>
<Row>
<Column0>0</Column0>
<Column1>1042.0</Column1>
<Column2>3778.0</Column2>
</Row>
</rowset>
< .... Stuff removed ..../>
<RS>
<R>
<C0>1042</C0>
<C1>3778</C1>
</R>
</RS>
It’s a count of items and loans, why float
values anyway?

8. Problems
• Fines data in Analytics – an ongoing analytics saga
– Requirement – a simple list of patrons and their current debt
• First logged 27 June 2013, but was apparent to us much earlier, we
spent too much time trying to work out what was happening, and
has been rumbling on in one form or another ever since.
• We have to export all transaction data and compute a value for
debt, presumably in a similar way to the Alma interface.
• Simply does not appear to be possible in Analytics despite an
attempted fix. May be about to be fixed in Feb 2014 release?
– More info on the mailing list and Analytics in the community
area if anybody wants to dig in a bit further

9. Problems
• Data availability, searchability
– e.g. Item internal notes not available in Analytics but only via
Alma and spreadsheet export (technical and other limitations
cited in case 00002273)
– Can’t search/filter on MARC fields, e.g 856 other than by 5 ‘Local
Parameter’ fields only configurable by Ex Libris staff
– So, Ex Libris have ingested our data and say you can no longer
analyse some parts of it!
– This is all inflexible, too much hoop jumping
– Why?

10. Problems
• Daily updates
– Promised since the early days, took forever to arrive, eventually
available end of October 2013, at least 9 months late.
• Performance reliability
– Many timeout or reported ODBC errors by analytics, also seems
to have been resolved by end of October 2013

11. Moving forward
LDIV – Library Data, Information and Visualisation
• Not just Alma Analytics ……… looking for the bigger picture
– Building usage, survey stats, Primo logs, ezproxy logs, Aspire
data and usage, student grading, …….
– Local data generators,
• real time flash surveys, information point query statistics
• in-library usage of physical stock (items left on tables)
• Alma Analytics (will be) used mostly
– to generate aggregate data from Alma
– data exploration and analysis development
– export analysis data for use elsewhere

12. Prototype flash survey recorder

13. …. and forward
• Using a Library dashboard
– To replace a SharePoint site of spreadsheets
– Integrate analysis data from Alma Analytics, gathered via API
with other sources of data
– Tableau (?) (and probably other technology like d3.js)
• Loan by classmark analysis, data from Alma
– http://bit.ly/1f8pOQm
• Ebook spend over the years, data from Alma
– http://bit.ly/1fW0IJi
• ezproxy log analysis
– http://bit.ly/1ecUL3V

14. Conclusion & Questions
• Some difficulties
– Lack of daily updates. Cash reconciliation against Self Check
machines could only be caught up once a week.
– Also made it difficult getting good indication of items in high
demand.
• But, getting better with interesting development in the future
• Questions?