An Analysis of Demand for Public Library Books Requested for Delivery Online Based Upon Genre: Technical Report

This report documents the approach the researcher’s project will take in order to answer the question posed. This project aims to address demand issues that may exist within the infrastructure of the public library system in Ireland, starting with localised analysis of the books that are requested for borrowing online from local libraries in order to better see what genres of books have the highest demand for books based upon genre. The dataset is made up of a local library's online lending service, which lists each book and how many times it has been borrowed online. The document intends to assist the reader in understanding what took place in the project and how the approach used helped to complete its various milestones. December 2019 marked the mid-point of the project, a stage at which many of the techniques that were needed in order to dive further into the datasets, would only be taught in semester two starting February 2020. Due to various circumstances including the COVID-19 pandemic, May 2021 was the date marking the completion of the project; the proceeding document summarising all of the steps that were taken throughout the duration of this project and the manner of its completion. Using a dataset provided by the Rush Public library, this project was able to analyse and determine which genre groups of books were the most successful from the genres currently made available by public libraries, and predict which genres would be popular in the coming years