useR! 2024

The University of Toronto Libraries (UTL) is committed to informed assessment, as we strive to continually improve library performance and align library services to meet university needs. The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) annually collects data on collections, expenditures, services, and enrolment from over 120 ARL member libraries, including UTL. This survey data is one of the most comprehensive data sources of academic libraries in North America that help libraries benchmark own performance against others and understand overall trends. The abundance of data accessible through ARL underscores the need for an intuitive tool capable of facilitating the visual comparison of this data. An R package with Shiny application (app), libraryStatistics, was developed following best practices. This Shiny app permits to visualize, track trends, and compare peer institutions for up to five years in user uploaded data, requiring no data cleaning. Overall, the tool enhances the utilization of ARL data in making evidence-based decisions within UTL and peer libraries, to gain insights into the ways in which library resources contribute to its community, to support research endeavours.