Digital Collections As Data May 11, 2017June 30, 2017 jshanahan Leave a comment Ana Lucic, Digital Scholarship Librarian at DePaul and co-PI, writes: Historically, circulation data and the demographic characteristics of library branch patrons have been used to analyze reading patterns and behaviors of different audiences. To date, our “Reading Chicago Reading” project has taken advantage of the circulation data we received from the Chicago Public Library and from the American Community Survey to shed light on the reception of different OBOC selections throughout diverse Chicago neighborhoods. See e.g. our earlier post. We are also interested in the text characteristics… Read more
“The Book Is Just The Beginning” – Part 1 May 4, 2017June 30, 2017 jshanahan Leave a comment The “One Book One Chicago” (OBOC) program has evolved since the fall of 2001, expanding and diversifying its programming around the city. As noted in an earlier post, reading the chosen OBOC book is only one kind of participation in the larger social space of engagement with literary culture. Archiving Chicago Public Library’s One Book materials, English graduate student Mihaela Stoica has documented the great variety of OBOC-related events of the past several seasons. The main branch of the CPL holds physical files for previous OBOC seasons, with information on programming… Read more
Library as Platform, Library as Cloud … February 20, 2017June 30, 2017 jshanahan 1 Comment In 2012, in Library Journal, David Weinberger wrote about how libraries should perhaps best be conceived as platforms, canopies, and even clouds — beautiful, and suggestive, imagery useful to help capture the emergent architectures of public libraries. According to the 2016 18-month update of the City of Chicago Tech Plan, “Since the [new BiblioCommons] website’s launch in April 2014, CPL has seen a nearly 18 percent increase in website visits via mobile devices. Residents have been taking advantage of the new social features of the CPL site during the last year. More than 170,000 … Read more
Parallel Coordinates Visualization October 6, 2016October 12, 2016 jshanahan 1 Comment Tim Zhang spent some time experimenting with visualizations of the PCAs and circulation numbers for several recent One Book One Chicago choices. You can see his complete interactive visualization in the “Results” section.… Read more