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This paper aims to describe a data analysis methodology using data‐ and knowledge‐mining techniques focused on libraries. It concerns data analysis techniques in general, as well as ways in which they could be applied to library management. The ultimate purpose of this data process is to make the exported information useful to decision makers, so as to help them with decision making and strategy planning. This will lead to a more efficient organisation of the internal processing, and to improvement of the services offered in a library.

Methodologies based on knowledge and data mining are used to analyse the real data in one specific case study library (Library of Technical University of Crete, Greece) in order to describe the concept better. The results obtained concern the extraction of information about the inter‐relations of data and the definition of factors that can be used in library management and strategic planning. The scope of the paper is to show how data coming from libraries can be analysed to give useful results for decision‐makers, in order to improve the services they offer.

The paper provides a detailed list of all existing data resources in a library and describes step‐by‐step an analysis methodology based on processes of knowledge discovery and mining from given data. It refers to general principles that should be used for choosing the data to be processed and for defining the way the data should be combined and connected.

The research reported in this paper can be extended to define other new indicators regarding the quality of services offered to libraries by using a greater amount of data for analysis.

Changes should be made in the way of choosing data for analysis. The way of choosing data here is based on a methodology according to knowledge and data‐mining principles. A definition of new indicators about the quality of services in libraries should be derived from this methodology.

The new thinking in the paper is in the way librarians and decision‐makers in libraries have to use data. The paper shows a way of choosing data that will be able to produce useful conclusions after a well‐described analysis. The paper will be useful for librarians and library managers who want to plan strategies for improving the services they offer.

Libraries constitute a highly developing area as they always enrich their offered services in order to satisfy users' expectations. One of the most important factors in customization strategies and improvement of individual services must be user preferences. However, customization requires an in‐depth analysis of user preferences and an evaluation of future behavior. The main objective of this paper is to present a framework for analyzing changes of user preferences in a library.

The paper presents detailed results of two independent user satisfaction surveys conducted in an interval of five years in the Library of the Technical University of Crete and analyzes them using a proposed framework. However, the framework can be applied in every modern library. The analyses are based on non‐parametric statistical techniques and a multicriteria satisfaction analysis method, which is a multicriteria preference disaggregation approach.

Overall, user judgments for both surveys show that 50‐70 percent of users are “very satisfied” or “satisfied”. The percentage of “satisfied” users increased from 2005 to 2010 (almost 18 percent) and “very satisfied” remained almost the same.

Results are mainly focused on the evaluation of potential trends of user preferences. Furthermore, results of a benchmarking analysis are also presented, based on the evolution of satisfaction levels for the quality characteristics of the offered services.

The goal of the presented study and proposed framework and methodology is to help library decision makers track changes to user preferences and improve the provided services according to those preferences.

The purpose of this paper is to disseminate information about the IFLA pre‐conference in Chania, Crete, Greece on the subject of open access in libraries.

Report on visit.

The main focus of the meeting was open access. Much information was shared.

This is an original work with some quoted material.