Data sets for Libraries

[Dave Mee]

Hi All,

Is there anyone on the list (or in reach of anyone on the list) who knows about libraries and open data? I'm particularly interested in finding what data libraries make available about their usage, so things like

* Book return rates

* Titles on loan

* Footfall

* Budget allocation

- I'm particularly interested in time-sequenced data and data that may be updated more frequently than annually.

If there's anyone who may be able to help me understand the privacy issues and concerns (of which I'm aware there are legion) around libraries and data publishing, there's a frothy coffee waiting.

Thanks

Dave

[Ian Dunlop]

Hello,

The Greater Manchester Data Synchronization Project - GMDSP - got access to library data from Trafford and Manchester councils. The data is browsable via http://data.gmdsp.org.uk/themes/libraries. Some of the code used to transform the data from spreadsheets to RDF is also available - https://github.com/GMDSP-Linked-Data/RDF-work-in-progress/tree/master/Libraries

Jamie Whyte from Trafford council might be able to help you.

Cheers,

Ian

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[Jamie Whyte]

Hey Dave - happy to talk this through with you if you like? If you've got something specific that you want to do, we may be able to help you out...

Ta

J

[Martin Burroughs]

On the positive side, a lot of Greater Manchester libraries use the same IT system now, under a joint project. Oldham and Rochdale, I think Stockport and some others. And I'd bet a lot of librarians would see value in getting information out there.

On the negative side, I think that development has been a bit slow from the data interrogation side, so open data may be a way down their priority list. And, inevitably there will be a cost involved in setting it up- is there the demand?

You might find some basic longitudinal data (aggregate book loans, footfall and maybe others) is available via CIPFA, LGInform and local performance reporting (which will tend to be monthly/quarterly but probably hard to extract). Footfall is always dodgy though!

Martin

[Steven Flower]

Hello

Worth noting that with the GMDSP project we ended up doing some experiments in terms of modelling statistical "cubes" on books loans, by ward, rather than (for example) library stock, or locations: http://data.gmdsp.org.uk/themes/libraries.  There are of course, quite a few existing ontologies to describe "a book" and associated mechanisms - start here: http://www.bl.uk/bibliographic/datafree.html

Our reasoning here was to think about how the creation of such a model could be something that authorities could jointly contribute too, whilst also "singing off" the data for each period.  One of the key observations from the small snapshot we worked with was the high volume of "out of area" loans in both Manchester and Trafford.  It would have been great to follow up on this to further investigate via the lens of other authorities - linked open data could help us investigate the nature of "out of area"!

As a output, I also created a generic stats cube repo, to document transforming (spreadsheet) data into these formats: https://github.com/GMDSP-Linked-Data/GenericStatsCube - should anyone be interested to take this further, then by all means.  It would also be great to see more local data cubes on the new http://gmdatastore.org.uk/ 

Thanks

Steven

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