Business Intelligence In The Service Of Libraries

Business intelligence (BI) refers to methodologies, analytical tools, and applications used for data analysis of business information. This article aims to illustrate an application of BI in libraries, as reporting modules in library management systems are usually inadequate for a comprehensive business analysis. The application of BI technology is presented as a case study of libraries using the BISIS library management system in order to overcome shortcomings of an existing reporting module. Both user requirements regarding reporting in BISIS and already existing transactional databases are analysed during the development of a data warehouse model. Based on that analysis, three data warehouse models have been proposed. Also, examples of reports generated by an OLAP tool are given. By building the data warehouse and using OLAP tools, users of BISIS can perform business analysis in a more user-friendly and interactive manner. They are not limited with predefined types of reports. Librarians can easily generate customized reports tailored to the specific needs of the library.