Harvesting Information from a Library Data Warehouse

Abstract

Data warehousing technology has been defined by John Ladley as "a set of methods, techniques, and tools that are leveraged together and used to produce a vehicle that delivers data to end users on an integrated platform."1 This concept has been applied increasingly by industries worldwide to develop data warehouses for decision support and knowledge discovery. In the academic sector, several universities have developed data warehouses containing the universities' financial, payroll, personnel, budget, and student data.2 These data warehouses across all industries and academia have met with varying degrees of success. Data warehousing technology and its related issues have been widely discussed and published.3 Little has been done, however, on the application of this cutting edge technology in the library environment using library data.