1. Lead (One Sentence)
Demand for eBooks and eAudiobooks has drastically increased in B.C. libraries since the onset of COVID-19, according to B.C. Public Library Statistics.
2. Excel Workbook Link and Explanation
In my small slice data, I wanted to show how Digital Circulation has increased in the top five municipal libraries (based on estimated service population) in British Columbia over the past three years.
My second data update hit a load of roadblocks, which I think are necessary to point out before moving on to the third update. After meeting with Chad to discuss narrowing down the focus of my data, I decided to focus my dataset on how digital lending has changed since the onset of COVID-19. I felt as though I could create a multifaceted line graph that visually displayed these changes using different colours for each of the various libraries. The x-axis would have the years (thinking 2018 to 2020), and the y-axis would have the amount circulated (I have not decided at which increments I want this to be yet) of all electronic materials.
This is where the problem begins. When you look at previous years in my dataset, there is data missing on the estimated service population, making it hard to sort my data to create multiple small slices of data for each year (which are needed to calculate the differences between each year). Despite looking at the data from BC Data Catalogue, I haven't found the solution to this yet.
I took Chad's advice and hid all the extra rows of data that didn't pertain to my focus so that I could look more clearly at the specific data about digital lending. I left the circulation of all materials section there (for now) in case I wanted to compare and contrast that with the circulation of electronic materials. Chad also recommended that it could be useful to narrow my focus to one type of library system instead of the three mentioned in the raw data, which is how I ended up with the top five municipal libraries.
After this roadblock, I decided to dig further to see if this bar chart would be possible. If you look at the 2019 Yearly Statistics on the Vancouver Public Library website, it shows that Digital Circulation increased 4.9% from 2018 to 2019. Whereas when you look at the 2020 Yearly Statistics, you can see an increase of 36.9% from 2019 to 2020. This is a huge jump from the previous year, and one can only assume that it was due to libraries shutting down with the onset of COVID-19.
My plan is to use my data from the BC Data Catalogue to calculate the growth between years similar to how it was done with the Yearly Statistics on the Vancouver Public Library website but with the top five largest municipal libraries in B.C.
3. Original Dataset Link
The original dataset can be found here.
4. News Story/Study Link and Brief Summary
I found the article "Surrey Libraries introduces 'superloan' program for some eBooks, eAudiobooks," published in Surrey Now-Leader interesting regarding my dataset because it showcases how the demand for eBooks and eAudiobooks is continually rising with a substantial jump in the last year alone.
This article talks about how Surrey Libraries have added a new feature called "Skip the Line" to the library apps Libby and Overdrive to help readers access books sooner and for a shorter amount of time to keep up with high demands. Amy Ashmore, the manager of collections services with Surrey Libraries, mentions how in the last year, Surrey Libraries have seen a 28.5% increase in eBooks and eAudiobooks, but she doesn't mention how that data was collected.
Though I find the discussion of data in this article helpful to understanding the scale of the increase in eBooks and eAudiobooks, I think a visual representation of the growth over the years would be more useful.
