Finding Hidden Treasures in the Data

Introduction Librarians rely on statistics to capture who their users are and what resources and services they use. For an academic campus, the number of students, faculty, and researchers provide a sense of potential users of library services and resources. But who uses the services and resources and what do they use? Library staff can spend a lot of time tracking, consolidating, and analyzing the amount of materials that circulate, usage of e-resources, instructional sessions taught, questions asked at service points, and consultations in order to identify resources and services that need be supported and continued. Those numbers could also help identify areas of users’ needs that that the library staff could address.