Testimonials

"With increased pressure to provide more public services on smaller budgets, LibraryDecision Planner is the perfect tool to help library directors allocate resources effectively and plan wisely. Through its intuitive interface, LibraryDecision Planner focuses the GIS tools so that a library director can use the analytical power of GIS without getting bogged down in the technical details. Previously, only big city libraries had the staff to support GIS in their planning, but with LibraryDecision Planner, these decision making techniques are available to libraries of any size."
- Angela Lee, ESRI Libraries and Museums solutions manager

"CIVIC Technologies has done a wonderful job of using demographics to pinpoint service areas for our Central Library and five branch libraries. Their study, focusing on library use, programming, and facilities, will provide an essential tool for planning future library service in Glendale. We will be able to use these results to move forward rapidly when opportunities for funding and/or site selection arise. The individual library user in Glendale will benefit directly from the collection and interpretation of the data and the resulting recommendations. CIVIC Technologies was very professional, and we are very pleased with the finished product!"
-Laurel Patric, Former Director of Libraries, Glendale Public Library (CA)

"We decided to license LibraryDecision because our library system is growing, and we needed an easier way to mesh patron data from our ILS with demographic data. LibraryDecision will eliminate the need for the tedious exercise of manually plotting registered cardholders using hundreds of color-coded dots on a large wall map. We will be able to reduce this part of the planning process from several days to minutes. LibraryDecision is also extremely end-user friendly, the reports it generates are targeted, and the exceptional implementation kit provided by CIVIC Technologies makes getting started easy."
-Lynne Williams, Administrative Librarian, Automation/Technical Services, Solano, Napa and Partners (CA)

"Everybody wants to be sure library funds are being applied as effectively and fairly as possible. LibraryDecision Planner will help libraries and funding agencies understand population and demographic changes in their service areas, enabling better short-term budget allocations as well as long-term facility planning. TLC and CIVICTechnologies are ideal partners for this purpose, combining expert knowledge of library data and geographical data to produce meaningful visual representations of library statistics."
-Jimmy Thomas, The Library Corporation, Director of Strategic Products

"Clark County Public Library's strategic planning initiative includes evaluating current facilities and potential new service points in the community. To aid our facilities planning we wanted to look at population projections, the demographics of the community, where we're located in relation to schools, parks, etc. GIS was able to provide our patron information from Polaris to CIVICTechnologies. The resulting maps enable us to see where our patrons are concentrated and, because LibraryDecision is web-based, share this data with our planning consultant even though we are in different parts of the state. Using our Polaris data with LibraryDecision gives us the information we need to move forward with fact-based decisions about the best ways to allocate our resources to improve service to the Clark County community.”
-John McConagha, Library Director, Clark County Public Library (OH)

"LibraryDecision gives us current and projected demographic information, and will immediately re-calculate that information as we look at possible changes to our existing branch service areas. This will, in turn, give us guidance as to how we locate, staff and stock our branches."
-Greg Simpson, Planning Manager, Houston Public Library

“LibraryDecision was key to helping us identify where the people live who have a literacy problem, so we could target literacy improvement programs for the Certified Literate Community Program. We used the query builder feature to identify data associated with illiteracy, and to help quantify the size of the problem. To use the query builder was easy. We clicked a button on the LibraryDecision interface that opened the query dialog box. Then we pulled down the Select Query list to find the desired expressions…Within seconds after pressing the Submit button, the LibraryDecision map interface refreshed with all the census blocks highlighted in blue that fit the query. We printed the LibraryDecision maps and successfully used them in our presentations to the community for grant funding applications. All in all, the entire process took less than one hour. It would have taken days to compile all this information and make the maps if we had to do it by hand.”
-Carla Beasley, Assistant Director for Materials Services, Forsyth County Public Library (GA)

“It's a very visual technology. It's tough to really understand the value of GIS technology until you actually see it and ‘drive around' in it. When people do see it, they go ‘wow,' and begin to think of all the data they could correlate visually that they never thought of before. For example, we were able to visualize the distribution of the Hispanic population in our service areas and correlate that with the percentage of Spanish-language books in each of the libraries in those service areas. Statistics make more sense and are easier to understand when you can see them mapped out, and at the same time create correlations on the fly among all the data you have collected. We are excited about the potential of GIS software for improving our planning and service delivery.”
-David Flint, Assistant Director for Finance and Planning, County of Los Angeles Public Library