This project presents a series of interactive data visualizations which identify thematic trends in popular books amongst the Goodreads community. The presentation will also cover the pipeline developed for the project, which was designed to be replicable in a Public Library context.
By analyzing the persistence of these trends across time, the project also interrogates the benefits and limitations of applying data analysis in the context of library collection development activities. The project thus hopes to illustrate some of the ways in which digital humanities methodologies, and metadata analysis can be applied to library work beyond academia.
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Maddy Casey is a Masters of Library and Information Science student (graduating Spring 2025). She particularly enjoys exploring digital preservation, metadata, and critical data literacy. Her interest in library science is driven by a passion for ethically making information accessible, engaging, and the opportunities information science presents in service of that goal. She is also interested in making the labor of digital work visible, and exploring the ethical implications of the ways in which information is constructed.