SCELC partners with EBSCO to expand Panorama™ data capabilities

 EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) is partnering with one of the largest academic consortiums in the United States, the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC), to provide consortium staff with EBSCO’s analytics tool, Panorama^™. In addition to benefiting from Panorama’s known features, including a self-service platform for data discovery, default and custom visual dashboards, and customisable data sources, SCELC will work with EBSCO to expand Panorama’s brand-new, Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) data dashboard and build a new tool for visualising diversity in shared print collections.

IPEDS data dashboards enable library-driven comparisons of an institution’s data to other institutions or groups for benchmarking purposes. In response to this need and to provide SCELC libraries with resources they need to streamline efforts and provide evidence of their library’s value, Panorama will provide an IPEDS dashboard feature designed to harvest data for ongoing IPEDS reporting and historical context. At least one dashboard will be customised to SCELC’s requirements, as well as a general IPEDS dashboard suitable for all customers. 

In addition to the newly released IPEDS dashboard, SCELC will leverage Panorama to help visualize diversity in shared print collections. Building on custom datasets from the SCELC Shared Print Program as well as their sister shared print program Eastern Academic Scholars’ Trust (EAST), this project will compare minority-serving vs non-minority-serving institutions across various metrics in one-to-one, one-to-many, and group-to-group comparisons. The goal is to produce high-quality visualizations of the collections to gain insights about diversity, equity and inclusion offerings within and across these collections. 

SCELC Executive Director, Teri Oaks Gallaway, says the partnership will help fulfill a distinct need for consortia data visualisation tools and is confident that Panorama’s customisation capabilities will serve future use cases for a variety of library and educational applications. “We are delighted to have this opportunity to collaborate on creative solutions for the data visualisation needs of library consortia. This is a tool we have needed for some time, and this partnership will contribute to customizations for a variety of potential future use cases that will allow us, and others, to analyse and communicate data findings to stakeholder groups easily.”

SCELC Research and Scholarly Communication Director, Jason Price, says this partnership will provide the opportunity for SCELC to represent the data visualisation needs of scores of libraries as they guide consortia dashboard development and functionality in collaboration with the community. “We look forward to this opportunity to play a key role in developing Panorama dashboards that will increase transparency and understanding of library return on investment and shared print collection diversity.”

EBSCO Information Services Director of Product Management, John McDonald, says this partnership will help to enhance Panorama’s new and existing offerings to better assist libraries in their efforts to demonstrate their value and make informed decisions towards serving their patrons. “This partnership with SCELC has helped to expand upon Panorama’s current offerings by extending functionality for consortia so they can better serve their members with robust and accurate data.”