Revised 03/31/2020
For my final report and future assignments, I will be using a data set that displays information about events associated with item requests and holds from the UNC Charlotte J. Murrey Atkins Library. Dr. Croxton is an employee at the Atkins Library and provided me with the data set. Patrons at the library are able to request items to be pulled and placed on hold for them to pick-up instead of having to search the shelves for their items. “Requesting an item” and “Placing an item on hold” are often used interchangeably and the data set I will be using specifically uses the term “holds” instead of requests.
The data itself focuses on hold events occurring between January 1st, 2018 and December 31st, 2019, with 53,957 rows of information. The information provided is largely nominal data, but does include dates and times which are both ratio/interval and ordinal. The nominal variables are different in nature and include borrower category, library branch, format, and shelving location. ‘Shelving location’ could be demographic in regards to the library environment and ‘library branch’ could be viewed as demographic when looking at it from the campus standpoint. The variables ‘borrower category’ and ‘item format’ appear to be categorical in nature.
The following Hold Events were present in the initial data set:
Cancel-Hold: Requests and holds that were cancelled, usually includes the reason it was cancelled
Expire-Hold: Items that were placed on the Hold Shelf, but were not picked up by a patron in time. Items remain on the Hold Shelf for one week, and are then considered expired.
Fulfill-Hold: When a patron has come to the library to check-out their requested item. This category also includes items that were taken to the Architecture Library hold shelf.
Place-Hold: When the patron placed the request for their item.
Please note: The event type ‘expire-hold’ will be omitted from the final analysis.
The rest of the data set includes the following variables:
Library branch the requested item belongs to
Event Type (i.e. one of the events listed above)
Date and Time the Hold Event occurred
Borrower category or user group that placed the hold
Item barcode
Title of the item
Call number and Shelving location
The format of the requested item (i.e. book, audio visual, etc.)
With the data set, I am interested in learning the following:
The user groups that placed the most Holds;
Popular months and times of day for Holds to be placed vs. the least popular;
Specific items or titles that had a high request load;
The subjects that were requested more frequently than others.