Hello all,
Many thanks to those who responded to my enquiry about using travel pattern data, summary of responses below:
We haven't access to travel data, but you may wish to use your members
postcode file, and team up with a friendly GIS person in your authority?
eg. derive 'library catchments' to inform resiource allocation &
performance evaluation ... But maybe you have already done this?
Regards,
Andrew
Andrew Sandeman, Service Development Leader, Performance & Stock,
Business Centre C3, Waverley Court,
4 East Market Street, Edinburgh, EH8 8BG
0131 469 5866 [log in to unmask]
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I seem to remember one of the Future Libraries Prog pilots was doing something like this – Oxfordshire and Kent:
“The main objective of our project was to understand better user and non-user needs and
behaviours. We are using the analytical tool that we have developed to progress this work
further in a number of areas. These include: Examining how stakeholders travel about the
county, showing how users make use of multiple service points, assessing how catchment
areas for libraries either overlap or are distinct, pinpointing clusters of need across our
authorities, identifying precisely the number of stakeholders in categories of need that may be
affected by different models of library provision, targeting our consultation with stakeholders to
particular groups or communities."
From: http://www.mla.gov.uk/news_and_views/press_releases/2011/~/media/Files/pdf/2011/libraries/future-libraries-report
Laura Swaffield
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Although not quite what you are asking last year we got our transport people to provide us with maps showing walk & bus journey times to the nearest library (including mobile stops), the data included the percentage of the population within 5, 10, 15 & 20 minutes walk to the nearest library (the bus one broke down to within 15 & 30 minutes). This was to inform a revision of our service points but proved to be less helpful than we anticipated - the software did not take into account terrain so that whilst some of the population could walk to a library in 20 minutes the steepness of hills meant that it would take considerably longer to return home. The population data was also only taken from the 2001 Census.
Also if you have done a recent Plus survey you can pay for a postcode report which will detail how far each person travelled which also gives the distance 5%, 25%, 50,75 & 95% live from each library & average distance.
Lionel
Lionel Aldridge
Performance Manager, Libraries Arts & Heritage
0113 395 2350
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You are probably thinking of Leicestershire libraries who worked with academic research - they used basic loans data and produced very interesting data. Look on the web using the term vizdata
In Nottinghamshire we have used a commercial tool called Mosaic provided by Experian. This is commonly used by a lot of commercial concerns to predict consumer preferences
We have really only scratched the surface with it so far, and focussed more on broad behaviour pattern types to analyse library catchment rather than travel patterns
Have a look at the PPRG presentation from last year's conference for a bit more info
Mosaic is a high price package and we only have it because there is an authority wide licence: http://www.experian.co.uk/business-strategies/mosaic-uk-2009.html
Hope this helps
Nick
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Oxfordshire did a lot of data analysis as part of the Future Libraries
Programme which has been used during our library service consultation.
You can see the resulting report "Quantitative analysis of service
requirements" and further details of which datasets were used in the
faqs file immediately beneath it.
http://www.oxfordshire.gov.uk/cms/content/supporting-information
Katharine Spackman
Principal Librarian, Information Services
Oxfordshire County Council - Community Services
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