Leveraging Data in Good (Budget) Times and in Bad
Over the last decade, Case Western Reserve University’s Kelvin Smith Library (KSL) has experienced both positive and negative fluctuations in funding. To counteract the challenges of a fluctuating budget, KSL stepped back to strategize ways to make impactful content decisions while demonstrating fiscal responsibility. This presentation focuses on how members of acquisitions, finance, and senior leadership worked together to determine key data points that could assist Research and Engagement Librarians (RELs) with making strategic collection decisions. In analyzing data, such as COUNTER reports and ILL requests, we identified materials that are most pertinent to our users and helped to narrow the gaps in our collection in a practical and effective way. This is a different way to approach collection development that leverages user-driven collection strategy decisions to maximize any budget, however identifying gaps was only the first step. This presentation will also demonstrate how the data was presented using Tableau, shared with various stakeholders, and effectively communicated our strategic decision-making.