Tell Your Librarys Story With

1
Tell Your Librarys Story With

• Instructor Jeanne Goodrich
• goodrich_at_teleport.com
• Winter 2004

2
Todays Agenda

• What is Bibliostat Connect?
• Logging in and Navigation
• Selecting Libraries to Compare to
• Alphabetically
• Peers
• Benchmarking
• Tables and Graphs
• Telling Your Story

3
What Connect Is

• Powerful web-based program
• Several databases of statistics
• California
• Federal (FSCS)
• PLA (PLDS)
• Tools for analysis and presentation
• Tables
• Graphs

4
What It Is Not

• Bibliostat Collect this is the program that you
  use to provide statistics to the state library

Both products are sold by
5
You Can Use It To

• Compare your library to others
• Find out where you rank in terms of key factors
• Find others that are like you based on a number
  of factors

6
Telling Your Story

• Budget preparation and defense
• Grant Proposals
• Local accountability and responsiveness
  demonstration

• Service planning and evaluation
• Marketing and public relations
• Facilities siting and resource allocation

7
Bibliostat Connect

• Will help you Tell Your Story
• Educate
• Persuade
• Inform

8
Heres What You Can Do
9
Or
10
Lets Get Started

• Activate Microsoft Internet Explorer
• This is the only browser that works
• Login
• Username and Password
• The Setup screen
• Libraries screen
• Data Screen
• Results Screen

11
Selecting Alphabetically

• You name the libraries, first selecting the state
• You may know the libraries you want to compare to
• Known exemplars
• Others your jurisdiction compares to
• Just curious

12
Results
All libraries in San Mateo county, selected by
naming.
13
Finding Peers

• Who are my peers? Who is like me?
• Data elements
• How do I stack up against them?
• What if this doesnt make sense?
• The Beverly Hills effect
• Slicing and Dicing

14
Results
Peers by population with high income removed.
15

• Statistical calculation based upon a precise
  group of libraries
• Can group by
• Average (arithmetic mean total divided by number
  of values)
• Median (the value in the middle of a series of
  values)
• Sum (total of all the values for that grouping)
• All applied to database selected
• Shown by percentiles, deciles, quartiles (i.e.,
  top 25)

16
Results
17
Tell Your Story

• Grab the listeners attention
• Dramatic examples or comparisons
• Pick the most compelling statistics
• Choose the best presentation mode
• Respect the listener/viewer dont waste his time

18
Make Wow! Comparisons
19
Who Knew?
OCLC report Libraries How They Stack Up
www.oclc.org/index/compare/
20
Tables Allow for More Data
21
Combining Techniques
22
Percentilesbenchmark of high circulation
libraries
23
Standardizedthe high circulation per capita
libraries are way outside the norm
24
Connect Graph
25
Exported to Excel, Auto formatted and Revised
26
How Will You Use Connect?

• Budgets
• Service Development
• Finding Best Practices
• Demonstrating accountability
• Demonstrating value for the dollar
• Grant Applications

The Crabby Council member