libtics.org — what it is and where it came from

08 Sep 2021

• aapl
• alma
• ex libris
• leganto
• library analytics
• libtics
• libtics.org
• primo

The project, libtics.org, began as an enquiry from the University of Leeds, via Ex Libris, about providing some training materials for internal use. Leeds were interested in developing analytics capability within the institution, having recently (in 2019) become users of Alma.

The project started in early 2020, just as the pandemic was picking up momentum. The current work has now mostly finished. Leeds wanted a comprehensive introduction to working with Alma Analytics. In agreement with them, I developed a set of materials.

I always had in mind that perhaps this material may be reusable and useful more widely. I would like the material to be open source. From the start a set of tools was chosen that would make it easier to generate multiple output formats including the libtics.org website. The material is written in asciidoc markup and outputs are generated using asciidoctor and antora.

The material covers:

• Introduction
• Using analytics in practice
• Understanding your data
• In more depth
• Dashboards
• Reusing components
• Format, style, charting
• Primo analytics
• Oracle Data Visualization – the new analytics component since October 2020.

Next up will be:

• Some Leganto
• Extraction/Export/APIs
• More examples, especially to do with e-resources and workflow
• In greater depth on a number of topics.

You can take a look at libtics.org.

One focus over the next few months will be making this sustainable. This means a couple of things. Getting some involvement from the Ex Libris analytics community and expressions of interest in helping develop content. Also, I need to derive some sort of income, to work on maintaining and improving the material. I can’t work for free. So, interesting topics and times.

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