The NGC solution is designed to make the library's physical collections more easily discoverable. A good metric to show the NGC's impact is to analyze the usage of the library's physical collections. We can do this by analyzing the circulation statistics (see figures 15 and 16).

By analyzing the sample set of libraries in this report who have implemented an NGC solution, we can conclude that while the NGC solution has not increased the circulation of physical materials in the library, it has contributed to the prevention of a plummeting circulation. With the focus of library spending changing from physical resources to electronic resources and with many libraries shrinking their physical collections, we would expect to see a decrease in circulation. However, this sample shows that the NGC has had a positive impact on the usage of physical resources.

By analyzing its website, a library gains valuable knowledge about the activity happening on the site. This allows essential visibility into the activity happening on the library's website. These log files contain a tremendous amount of detail that can produce reports such as path analysis, search engine optimization, and referring web site reports. In addition to the website's log files, tools can be added to the website to analyze user activities in other ways. Heat map technology can show what areas on a webpage are used more than others, allowing the website owner to learn what links and features are used heavily and what goes unused.

Figure 17 is an example of a heat map created with Crazy Egg, a product that records the location of each user's cursor on the screen when the user clicks. This information is used to produce a heat map image that can be overlaid on the webpage to illustrate what parts of the website are the most frequently used. Red color shows spots that are most frequently used. Cooler colors, like greens and blues, show spots that are less frequently used. Crazy Egg and other similar tools use a bit of JavaScript added to a webpage that allows the software to work. This approach is similar to that of other usage analysis tools, such as the popular Google Analytics (figure 18).

Google Analytics is a free tool provided by Google. Google keeps the data about your users collected by the software. If Google decided to terminate or drastically change the product, you could potentially lose your usage data. However, other similar tools are available that do not require Google to store your usage data; these tools include the commercial version of Google Analytics, known as Urchin, or the open source alternative Piwik. By storing the data in your own IT environment, you control the data retention policies. However, the down side is the cost in resources to store and report on the data.

These tools can also be configured to track the usage of the library OPAC and NGC. Many website usage tools provide the ability to parse specific elements out of the URL that is recorded in the website's log files. This allows the analyzer to pull out search queries or other specific elements that are specified in the site's URLs. By combining the library's website, OPAC, NGC, and any other online resources the library manages into a single reporting system, this can be a very powerful solution for analyzing how patrons use the library's online environment.

Because so many factors play a role in the impact of next-generation services, it can be difficult to use analytics to isolate the effect of any one specific service. For example, around the same time that Wake Forest University deployed its NGC solution, it also established a Starbucks coffee lounge in the library. This new service will most likely impact many other services, such as the gate counts, library website usage, and circulation of materials—all the statistics that need to be reviewed to calculate the impact of the NGC. So we have to take these other factors into consideration when analyzing the impact of such a solution; however, in order to provide empirical evidence, we must, as physicists say, “ignore wind resistance.”

Another institution in North America that deployed an NGC solution, York College in the Greater Toronto area, has announced that its VuFind solution has increased usage more than five times over the original OPAC. The OPAC was peaking out at just under 10,000 page views per day, while the NGC was peaking at around 50,000. William Denton, web librarian at York University, reports that “according to Google Analytics, people average about 60 seconds looking at the search results pages in VuFind, and 90 seconds looking at item records. In the classic catalogue, they spend about 45 seconds per page average.”¹ We don't know what other factors were in play at York during the time of the rollout of its NGC solution—but this evidence shows that the NGC solution has made a tremendous impact.