At our quarterly administrators meeting today, Alison Atkins Denton gave a demo of the web site for the Illinois Public Library GIS Project. It reminded me of why I am so entranced by Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The Illinois State Library sponsored a grant to the GIS Lab at the Illinois Institute of Technology to determine the boundaries of all public library districts in the State. The ultimate goal is to determine which areas are unserved and don't receive library service. It's a very cool project, and I still think there is a way to use GIS to visually display library metrics (database hits, web site hits, foot traffic, circulation, reference questions, program registrations, bookmobile stops, etc.).

On a side note, the administrators in attendance today held a lively discussion of the non-resident library card debate because Illinois legislators have mandated that public libraries have to opt-in or opt-out of selling library cards to non-residents for whom they are the closest library. If the library opts-out, they become ineligible for construction grants. I don't know enough about this to comment on the law and its ramifications but at one point today, the debate centered around patrons that purchase a card at a particular library and then rack up bills at a different library. This is a point of contention because the library that sold the card is ultimately responsible for reimbursement of items not returned by that patron.

So some librarians don't want to sell non-resident cards because of the potential liability for those items. Listening to the debate today, it sounded much like recent blanket statements by entertainment industry execs that their customers are thieves. One person disputed the view of non-residents as potential thieves, saying that general experience suggests these folks "aren't exactly pulling up in Winnebagos."

So a gentle reminder to librarians that our patrons are not the enemy. That's an extra heaping of reminder for entertainment industry execs, too.

COUNTER - Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources

" 'The use of online information resources is growing exponentially. It is widely agreed by producers and purchasers of information that the use of these resources should be measured in a more consistent way. Librarians want to understand better how the information they buy from a variety of sources is being used; publishers want to know how the information products they disseminate are being accessed. An essential requirement to meet these objectives is an agreed international Code of Practice governing the recording and exchange of online usage data. No such Code of Practice yet exists' (from SEPW)

This is a very important theme as libraries move more and more into the electronic and digital realm. In order for some libraries to justify their existence, they sometimes need to provide a count of usage of library materials. To this day there is no uniform code for obtaining this number. There should be, so that when administrator ask, 'what methods did you use to obtain these figures?', librarians can point to specific and 'official' rules. Am I also correct in thinking that this system can be used as bargaining power with vendors?" [Library Stuff]

It's so true that libraries need new metrics to fully illustrate the breadth of services they now provide. Check out this slide (Powerpoint) from Navjit Brar's presentation about Mobile Computing at the Kennedy Library (Powerpoint) as evidence.

While I'm not totally sure how to pull it off (especially in regards to privacy concerns), I think there should be a way to use GIS to plot various statistics (database searches, web site hits, circulation, in-library foot traffic, interlibrary loan requests, online catalog searches, reference questions, programming counts, etc.) for a given library. A color, multi-layered map of actual points that represent constituents using specific library services would go a long with legislators.