International Conference on Performance Measurement in Libraries

I was given an opportunity to attend an International Conference on Performance Measurement in Libraries at Aberystwyth University on the 24-25 July 2019. We also had a chance to visit some universities for benchmarking purposes, including the University of Oxford and King’s College, London.

During the conference, many interesting topics were discussed around assessment in libraries, which included but were not limited to performance indicators, assessment tools, assessing the use of spaces and measuring the library services impact. What really caught my attention was that libraries own a lot of data that is collected but never used, mainly because of the lack of skills in with which to manipulate data and stakeholders who are not data driven.

It was interesting and quite a relief to note that we are not behind in terms of what data we collect and analyze. But we can’t say the same about how and what tools we use to perform this task. Many international libraries are using advanced technological tools to analyze and visualize data. One tool that dominated at the entire conference was Tableau, which is a tool for both data analysis and data visualization. It is said to reduce analysis time by up to 80% and creates live dashboards that can be accessed even by using a cellphone.

At the National Library of Wales