How can you use data visualization to assess digital library performance?

1 Define your goals and indicators

The first step to use data visualization to assess digital library performance is to define your goals and indicators. What do you want to measure and why? What are the key questions you want to answer? How will you use the data to inform your decisions and actions? Depending on your context and purpose, you may have different goals and indicators for different aspects of your digital library, such as user behavior, content quality, service efficiency, or outreach effectiveness. For example, you may want to measure how many users visit your digital library, how long they stay, what they search for, what they download, how satisfied they are, how diverse your collection is, how fast your system is, or how many people you reach through social media.

2 Collect and clean your data

The second step to use data visualization to assess digital library performance is to collect and clean your data. You need to gather the data that corresponds to your goals and indicators from various sources, such as web analytics, surveys, logs, metadata, or social media. You also need to ensure that your data is accurate, consistent, and complete. This may involve checking for errors, outliers, duplicates, missing values, or irrelevant information. You may also need to transform, aggregate, or normalize your data to make it suitable for analysis and visualization. For example, you may need to convert dates, currencies, or units, group data by categories or time periods, or calculate ratios or percentages.

4 Interpret and share your results

The fourth and final step to use data visualization to assess digital library performance is to interpret and share your results. You need to analyze your visualizations and draw meaningful insights and conclusions from them. You also need to communicate your results and recommendations to your stakeholders and audiences, such as managers, staff, funders, partners, or users. You may use various formats and channels to share your results, such as reports, presentations, websites, blogs, or social media. You may also use storytelling, narration, or annotation to enhance your message and engage your viewers. For example, you may use a report to summarize your findings and suggest actions, a presentation to highlight your achievements and challenges, a website to showcase your visualizations and invite feedback, a blog to share your stories and insights, or social media to promote your digital library and attract new users.

5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?