Got Metrics? - The NSDL Metrics Matrix

The NSDL Metrics Working Group has been developing a set of recommendations to the NSDL community, centered on best practices for metrics gathering and analysis over multiple aspects of a project's activities and lifecycle. The group was tasked in January 2009 with 1) helping individual projects improve their understanding, collection, and analysis of metrics data, first starting with web metrics data, and 2) finding common metrics that could be used across all NSDL projects so that interested parties can look at the whole of NSDL. The over-arching goal is to provide best practices and guidelines for measuring impact for individual projects and the entire NSDL. The working group has come up with a matrix that correlates activities, data that can be collected, and possible impacts that can measured directly or inferred from the data. As a tool, the matrix provides multiple ways to help project staff uncover data they are missing or overlooking and help demonstrate audience and project impact.