*Cross-posting to Cultural Partners, but please reply to the public GLAM list, not cultural partners. Thanks!*
Hello all,
In following through on a request from attendees at GLAMcamp, I wanted to give just a brief/general update on the WMF Analytics Team's plans for an Analytics dashboard. At GLAMcamp it was stated that this is some "super secret" thing that no one knows about, which surprised me. It's in no way super secret, and you can read all about what they're up to here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Analytics
I also encourage anyone who is interested in staying in the loop to join the analytics mailing list. A link can be found at the top of the above linked page.
I recently had a call with Diederik van Liere of the Analytics Team. If you have any specific questions or suggestions for him, feel free to reach out (it's his job : ). dvanliere@wikimedia.org (But I'd say to do this after first reading through the very informative page above.)
So I'm good at understanding pretty well the technical things people are talking about when they're explaining them nice and clearly to me, as Diederik did. But I'm very bad at rearticulating such a conversation back out to other people. So I'm just going to sort of type up my notes and you all can make sense of them. They're along these lines:
- There will not be a specific GLAM analytics tool built by WMF, but the dashboard they are creating is intended to be able to be useful for anyone, GLAM folks included. They are aiming to have this complete by summer of next year.
- They would like to be aware of the current GLAM processes so that they can connect better to what they're already doing with their work. Mainly, it's useful for them to know how to identify a GLAM-specific media file. We already have some systems in place for this, but it'd be worthwhile to follow up on if what are current file-naming standard is is best for what they're doing.
- Other scribbles I wrote down that you can make sense of yourself:
- Cluster of reader data - Self service data platform. Provides tools to do it yourself / curate data. - They will tag data for you. - Provide data in a clean and raw way. No visualization. - Requests are pretty generic: geography, device, re-use
- I have shared the most pertinent GLAM-related Commons pages with Diederik, which he had not yet seen. He's also involved in at least a minimal capacity with the Europeana Toolset project so I hope that means things won't fall through the cracks between the two.
- I also have a Google Doc that's not fit for public consumption where I compiled user cases and rationales for GLAM-specific needs in an analytics dashboard, based on a meeting I had with Rob Stein of the Indianapolis Museum of Art. If you're interested in helping me to improve this document and make it suitable to be placed on-wiki, please let me know.
*Action step*: I think we should create a single page, be it on meta, outreach, or mediawiki, where we compile all of the useful links, needs, and suggestions for the Analytics Team. They can then take from that what they can. But centralizing the information is key. This could include the above Google Doc I mention, links to our current guides and partnerships lists on Commons, info on the Europeana Toolset Project, and additional suggestions we may have. I'd be appreciative to hear if someone, who is more technically inclined than myself (and that doesn't take much) is willing to take this on.
Hope that helps, and thanks for your patience as I attempt to faciliate this topic which is far out of my comfort zone. Lori