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Next Generation Library Publishing

The Next Generation Library Publishing project received significant funding to explore new ways of providing an open publishing environment, using open source tools. Cottage Labs worked with the team to develop flexible data analytics to allow publishers using the tools to have access to usage data and business intelligence comparable to or better than commercial tooling.

Challenge

The NGLP team wanted to provide a set of open source options for publishing bodies to select from, including repository platforms for content storage, dissemination platforms for publishing, and so on. To bind it together, an analytics package was required which would take heterogenous usage data from all the different sources, and provide a coherent view.

Solution

A significant portion of the project was in requirements analysis and solution specification, as there was a large stakeholder group and an even larger pool of potential use cases. We analysed all the options through conversations with stakeholders and were able to prioritise two reporting dashboards: one of usage analytics, and one for workflow velocity intelligence. We then build general connectors which would allow this data to be imported and normalised from a number of external systems including DSpace and OJS. This data fed into an index optimised for time-based reporting, and we implemented two full dashboard of analytics including geolocated usage data.

Success

At the end of the project we were able to hand over working open source code, as well as a workable plan for expansion of the analytics package to other requirements. There was interest from both the main discovery platform developers and some individual organisations in integrating this into their existing systems.