Circulation modeling of library book promotions

TLDR: It is shown that, over six recent offerings of the ``One Book'' program, the books vary widely in their uptake by library patrons at different branches, and these differences cannot be entirely explained by demographics or the library's promotional strategies.

Abstract: Community reading initiatives, in which a book is selected for system-wide reading and discussion, have become common in many library systems. This paper describes the initial findings in a demographic study of the ``One Book, One Chicago'' initiative by the Chicago Public Library. Using a multilevel linear model, we show that, over six recent offerings of the ``One Book'' program, the books vary widely in their uptake by library patrons at different branches, and these differences cannot be entirely explained by demographics or the library's promotional strategies. We thus motivate the next stage of our project, which is to incorporate representations of book content and reader response into the model.