Feature
“Data sources include virtual learning
environment activity, attendance data and
information from student registry systems”
cloud-based WorldShare Management Services and EZproxy access and authentication software, with its partners to establish the necessary processes to analyse data, to better understand the library’s impact on student learning and success. As part of this, WMS provided a means
to build learning analytics capabilities in the university’s library management system, while EZproxy logs provided access to detailed usage logs. Importantly, circulation statistics and user transactions from WMS and EZproxy datasets, as well additional contextual information were captured to build up a picture of student engagement with the library. And data was also integrated with the student record system to discover, for example, how many students from a certain course
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accessed ScienceDirect, shedding light on library resource use across a range of demographics. The collaboration was a success.
James Hodgkin, associate director of library technology and information, and university librarian at the University of Gloucestershire, said at the time: ‘When OCLC came on board and worked with us on the data and standard plug-in, they really set the bar.’ OCLC is now due to take part in a pilot alongside additional organisations also working with Jisc on its learning analytics service. In a further development, OCLC is
to launch its EZproxy analytics service next year. It will enable a library to use its proxying service to investigate user behaviour information and decide how best to measure student engagement. ‘Libraries really are sitting on great data. It is serendipitous that we are launching this service next year,’ said
McCann. ‘EZproxy can provide a wealth of information; for example certain titles can be targeted, with the librarian then deciding if they want to track that activity down to a department or a student level, and then communicate how that activity is happening within the student body.’ Developed alongside France-based
Couperin.org, analytics features are based on open source ezPaarse software, from
Couperin.org, which ingests, filters and enriches proxy log files to give users access to subscribed electronic resources. Given this, the new analytics option can augment EZproxy log data to illustrate, say, how a library user is accessing subscribed electronic resources via, for example, dashboard- style analytics and graphs. Excitingly, earlier this year, a pilot with six universities, including the University of Manchester, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the University of New England, delivered promising results. OCLC’s analytics were used to glean information on logins from around the world, as well as access events and insights into the top 10 journals, publishers and platforms across a 90-day time-frame. Librarians could
December 2019/January 2020 Research Information
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