FOPL has embarked on an exciting project.
For the first time this year, the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Sport has released the Ontario Public Library Data Collection as an open data file from 1999-2010. The next two years will be released as open data in December.
Therefore, for the first time, we have access to these data to perform analyses over time and compare libraries performance. These data can now be used as management and insight tools for our community.
In the coming weeks, we will be releasing some of the data in ‘buckets’ for your reading.
Our consultant on this project is Dr. Robert Molyneux (often referred to as Dr. Data!) who is a PhD and MLS with great depth in library statistics. He has been involved in many of the most important library data sets globally – including NCLIS, IMLS, ARL, and NCES, among others.
We thought that the best way to start off this process was to provide you with a primer on library statistics and these data. Please read this and you will be better prepared to read the coming weeks’ reports.
Here is a link to:
A Primer on Library Data
Robert E. Molyneux, MSLS, PhD
Primer (3) (7 page PDF)
The purpose of this series of reports is to present the results of analysis of aspects of Ontario’s public libraries using the data from the Ministry of Tourism, Culture, and Sport. The goal is twofold: to present these results of this analysis in order both provide an initial assessment of Ontario’s public libraries and through these results to solicit comments and suggestions to improve and focus future analysis.
The various tables we will present over the next weeks are a sample of the work we have done. They provide an indication of the state of Ontario’s public libraries and provide examples of techniques which can be applied in other ways to advance the cause of libraries and aid FOPL in its work of improving Ontario’s public libraries. If you are new to the ways of library data, we have prepared a Primer which is included in hopes it will be a helpful introduction to the vagaries of library data and methods customarily used to examine libraries using their data.
The Data
The Ministry has compiled and published a series of data on the province’s public libraries
since 1999. The data are published in two formats: Portable Document Format (PDF) and
“comma-separated values” (CSV). The PDFs for each year are organized by bands of libraries organized by the number of resident population and these bands are further divided by seven separate pages by categories. Each year’s reports is in 72 documents suitable for printing and likely used for simple analysis by librarians. Publishing public library data by resident population served has a long pedigree and is the commonest way to provide evidence to compare like libraries. It is a recognized procedure in the search for the “apples to apples” comparisons that bedevil library analysis. Currently, the Ministry’s Website has annual data from 1999-2012 in PDF. These pages permit analysis of libraries similarly for any one year but do not permit easy analysis of all libraries or for more than one year or for analyzing libraries which are similar by other measures than resident population. General analysis of all libraries is quite difficult using these files.
The CSV-formatted files permit the data to be brought into a spreadsheet program readily and each year’s file has all the data for that year. Thus, analysis of more than each population band is possible and by combining data for more than one year, trends can be observed within the limits of spreadsheets. These annual data exist for 1999-2010. This set of data are those used for this report and most of the tables which follow have data for the years 2001-2010. This data series is unusually well organized for a series of library data. Although, the 1999 data are different from the 2000+ data because that year has many more variables, by 2001, the collection criteria were established and the variables each year were collected in a consistent fashion and the libraries reporting are reasonably consistent. In addition, there is a key variable, LibID, which is a numeric key to each of the libraries which is also consistent across the series. These are two big things the Ministry got right and this well-designed infrastructure is both rare in the library data world and is an aid to analysis. That said, there are many data points in this series and the tapestry of Ontario’s public libraries is a complex one and now we begin to explore this world through its data.
We will largely work with the 304 libraries which report each year of the series in order to have a consistent set of libraries. Data from contracting libraries are included with the libraries they contract with so they are not treated separately.
Of course, the analyses are only as good as the data submitted by Ontario public library systems and withing the limits of data analysis. However, FOPL is proud to be providing this key member benefit to underpin our discussions of library strategy and our promotion of the value of Ontario’s public libraries.
Watch for weekly editions of these data analyses every Wednesday her on the FOPL website blog (fopl.ca) and in your e-mailbox.
For more information contact Stephen Abram, executive director at FOPL – sabram@fopl.ca