Creative Data Mining Making Most of Your Data

Creative Data Mining Making Most of Your Data to Improve Services Project Director Project Principal Assistant Project Assistant Presented by Suliang Feng Elyse Adler Suliang Feng Hongfei Li Weimin Zhang Administrator, Automation & Technical Services Administrator, Research & Special Projects Nashville Public Library 20 th Annual Computers in Libraries 2005 March 17, 2005

The Challenges • Budget cuts • Staff reductions • Increasing customer expectations for high quality library services • Need a tool that can gather all the related deep “buried” data to perform systematical analysis and comparison, and supply meaningful data for decision-making. No such tool exists in current market.

The Solution • Nashville Public Library has been developing a deep data mining system, which can monitor almost all the aspects of its operation, and supply administration with decision-making data. • This system has been playing significant role in easing the gap between diminishing resources and demand for accountability.

Holds Management “Holds Management” is a section of the whole system, we will use this section for today’s presentation Note: The data use in this presentation is for demo purpose only, they do not necessary reflect the reality of the operation at Nashville Public Library

What can the Holds Management do for us? • Use our limited book budget to get maximum return in terms of meeting customer needs • What titles should we buy • How many copies should we buy and why • What is the status of the related orders • Automatically calculated based on mathematical formula *****

Collect All The Holds For Each Title Challenge: Find out all the holds under each title and related items.

Translate Holds Information To Purchase Decisions (1) • Sample: The Broker/John Grisham - Holds 314 • Holds Ratio is 3: 1 • The total number of copies to be added = 314 holds / 3 - the total number of copies purchased

List out total number of items purchased under each title

Translate Holds Information To Purchase Decisions (1) Continue … • The total number of copies need to be added = 314 holds / 3 - total copies purchased = 314 holds / 3 – 55 copies = 49. 7 copies Not all the copies purchased are still available for service

Translate Holds Information To Purchase Decisions (2) • We have to find out all the copies under each title that are no longer in service, which includes: Lost & Paid Damaged Claim Returned Withdrawn Missing Billed Staff Use

The system can identify all the “non-service” copies, deduct the amount from the total copies purchased, and arrive at the number of available copies accordingly:

Translate Holds Information To Purchase Decisions (2) Continue … • The total number of copies need to be purchased = 314 holds / 3 - total number of available copies = 314 holds / 3 – 36 copies = 68. 7 copies What about the copies currently on order ?

Translate Holds Information To Purchase Decisions (3) • Finds out the total number of copies of each title currently on order • Automatically links each title to its orders

The system finds out all the items on order under each title and then list them out

Translate Holds Information To Purchase Decisions (3) Continue … • The total number of copies need to be added = 314 holds / 3 - total number of available copies – total number of copies currently on order = 314 holds / 3 – 36 – 32 = 36. 7 copies We should exam all the titles currently in cataloging process stage and include all the copies if there any

Translate Holds Information To Purchase Decisions (4) • The system then searches the total number of copies of each title currently in processing at Cataloging Department • If copies are found, they will be included in the calculation

Locate the total number of copies under each title currently in processing

Translate Holds Information To Purchase Decisions (4) Continue … • The total number of copies need to be added = 314 holds / 3 - total number of available copies – total number of copies currently on order – total number of copies currently in processing = 314 holds / 3 – 36 – 32 – 2 = 34. 7 copies

Pay Attention to the Ratio Information ! There is a big difference in the ratios between book and DVD, why?

Translate Holds Information To Purchase Decisions (5) Holds Ratio • Books • DVDs 3: 1 12: 1

Translate Holds Information To Purchase Decisions (5) Continue … Holds Ratio • Books 21 days check out + 3 times of 21 days renews = 21 days + 3 x 21 days = 21 days + 63 days = 84 days • DVDs 7 days check out + 1 time of 7 days renew = 7 days + 7 days = 14 days • 84 days / 14 days = 6 times

Translate Holds Information To Purchase Decisions (5) Continue … • If we use 3: 1 as holds ratio for books then the holds ratio for DVDs should be (3 x 6) : 1 = 18: 1 • We use 12: 1 as Holds ratio for DVDs for now

Needed or Not – Green Light and Red Light

System Demo: http: //localhost/project 1/holdslist. asp

Thank You Suliang Feng Administrator, Automation & Technical Services (615) 862 -5805 suliang. feng@nashville. gov Elyse Adler Administrator, Research & Special Projects (615) 862 -5776 elyse. adler@nashville. gov Nashville Public Library 615 Church Street Nashville, TN, 37219