Raschke Helps OU Library Move Toward Future 

 Eli J. Mapes

     Bizzell Memorial Library welcomed Greg Raschke last Friday to speak about how data can help maximize the efficiency of today’s libraries.
     According to the event page on the event calendar on OU’s website, Raschke is the Associate Director for Collections and Scholarly Communication at North Carolina State University.
     Although libraries are not being used as much for the traditional reasons, such as finding an encyclopedia or certain hard copies of books, they are actually seeing an increase in total usage. “People are using our libraries more than ever, but they’re using them in very different ways,” says Raschke. This is not just happening at NC State, or even the United States. The Carstairs Public Library in Alberta saw a jump of nearly 3,000 visitors to its library from 2012 to 2013, and over a 300 visitor jump on its website, according to the Carstairs Courier.
     Raschke used sports references to tie in his concept of how he uses data to determine whether or not the libraries are being as efficient as possible. He referred to the film Moneyball, which highlights how the management of the Oakland Athletics maximized their efficiency with less talent, by creating their own system to evaluate how a certain player will contribute within the club. This is essentially what his data shows him: how much each book contributes in the overall aspect of the collection as a whole.
     Raschke has a way of tracking how much every book within his library system is used, and ties that into the amount that a certain source is used online from their website. He uses that sample of data and compares it to other books and sources throughout his database over time. If a book is not used at all, or not enough to be considered an efficient book, the library system will stop carrying the book. In the few years they have done this, the system has saved hundreds of thousands of dollars.
     Let it be noted that NC State is in a system with Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where they trade books regularly, and trucks run throughout, “the triangle,” sometimes as often as twice a day as the students, professors, and libraries trade books. The three universities have different programs of emphasis, so just because one book is not popular at NC State, it does not mean that the library gets rid of the book altogether. They first check to see if it would serve a better purpose at one of their other universities.
     Event organizer Karen Rupp-Serrano said she brought Raschke in because she believed that his information could be useful to library employees and other interested parties. “NCSU has been a leader on many fronts in the library world, so it wasn't too difficult for us to decide that learning more about their many initiatives would be useful to us,” Rupp-Serrano said.
     Raschke also took the opportunity to briefly show off a brand new library that he helped design at NC State, where there is a new system that stores and retrieves books as needed. Because this system actually saves space, this might be the library technology of the future.


Raschke discusses a psychological idea known as the Competency Trap that can often snag companies, both large and small. He introduces this idea to go along with the fact that today’s society is changing, so libraries must change with them in order to stay relevant. AUDIO: Eli J. Mapes, 1:47