Using Digital Analytics for Smart Assessment

Book excerpt: Tracking the library user's journey is no simple task in the digital world; users can often navigate through a series of different websites, including library websites, discovery tools, link resolvers, and more just to view a single journal article. Your library collects massive amounts of data related to this journey—probably more than you realize, and almost certainly more than you analyze. Too often library analytic programs simplify data into basic units of measurements that miss useful insights. Here, data expert Farney shows you how to maximize your efforts: you’ll learn how to improve your data collection, clean your data, and combine different data sources. Teaching you how to identify and analyze areas that fit your library’s priorities, this book covers case studies of library projects with digital analytics;ways to use email campaign data from MailChimp or ConstantContact;how to measure click-through rates from unavailable items in the catalog to the ILL module;getting data from search tools such as library catalogs, journal search portals, link resolvers, and digital repositories;using COUNTER compliant data from your electronic resources;techniques for using Google Tag Manager for custom metrics and dimensions;descriptions of analytics tools ranging from library analytics tools like Springshare’s LibInsights and Orangeboy’s Savannah to more focused web analytics tools like Google Analytics, Piwik, and Woopra; anddata visualization tools like Tableau or Google Data Studio. Focusing on digital analytics principles and concepts, this book walks you through the many tools available, including step-by-step examples for typical library needs.