One thing we do at OIN is design analytical products. We anticipate a full customer launch of Coursenest ROI, our Return-On-Investment analytical tool for academic libraries, in March 2027.

This poster illustrates the problem and the solution, though not the method. In the United States, IPEDS stopped tracking the usage and financial data for academic libraries in 2026. This indicates the waning position of academic libraries in the eyes of federal administration. IPEDS excluding academic libraries places these institutions at risk. You don't have to burn books to destroy an intellectual society - all you have to do is throw the books into a landfill. Nobody's protesting at a dumpster.

We have been using Coursenest ROI in beta testing to translate to administrators that academic libraries have a concrete impact on accreditation support, that library services are integrated into the curriculum, and that libraries use solid assessment practices to identify efficient and inefficient usage of resources. Coursenest ROI can also identify underperforming collections: If the majority demographic of your institution is indigenous, and yet your indigenous studies databases are barely used, this anomaly deserves to be investigated. Using the COUNTER Title Report and mapping titles to LCSH or BISAC, however, might show that these students use Proquest's Ethnic NewsWatch or Alt-Press services, specifically titles that let indigenous students connect with their own local news; and don't feel the need to use databases that largely focus on basic information about their lived experience.

Knowing how to map our data correctly helps us examine our own assumptions about what we think students want, versus what they actually use. You may have the highest-impact journals in your subscription - but if the language is too theoretical, the lexile score too high, then students will stop at the metadata. Crosswalking titles to lexile score is an analytic tool that helps identify how your students confront complexity as well as topic.

Administrators in charge of budget cuts speak in ROI and KPI and IPEDS, oh my! So let's learn how to speak their language - and stop our departments from getting introduced to the landfill.

It starts March 2027.