Weekly Top Book Holds by Edmonton Library Branch

Edmonton Public Library provides a weekly snapshot of the top ten books with the highest number of holds, organized by customer home library branch. The data is updated each Monday morning and includes book titles, authors, branch names, and hold counts. It is published by data.edmonton.ca, with the latest update in February 2025.

Use Cases

• Analyze temporal trends in book popularity using the `As of Date` and `Number of Holds` columns.
• Compare demand for specific `Title` and `Author` combinations across different `Branch Name` locations.
• Identify branch-specific reading preferences by joining branch data from the referenced Public Libraries dataset using `Branch ID`.
• Track the weekly ranking and movement of titles in and out of the top ten list per branch.

Strengths

• Data is updated weekly, providing frequent snapshots of demand.
• Includes branch-level granularity for spatial analysis of holds.

Limitations

• Limited to only the top ten books per branch per week, missing full demand distribution.
• Unknown total row count and historical time range for longitudinal analysis.
• Relies on an external dataset for detailed branch information (e.g., location, services).

Provenance

Source

data.edmonton.ca

Collection Method

Weekly snapshot of library hold system data.

Time Range

Weekly intervals from each Monday 9 AM to the next Monday 9 AM.

Freshness

Updated weekly, with last update on 2025-02-10.

Geography

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.