For my project, I took interest in seeing if I could uncover a correlation between major events surrounding violence against people of color, or more specifically the black community, and the public’s interest in the type of resources they check out of the library. I wanted to first take a general look at the check out counts of relevant materials to see if any trend appears before taking a closer look to see if any increases in the number of checkouts aligns with the dates of killings that made national headlines, protests, or transfer of powers between people in office. The question I ask is Are the rising racial tensions during major controversial events reflected in the materials people check out from libraries?

Query that takes a yearly look at checked out books containing the keywords in their titles.

SELECT
YEAR(cout) AS years,
COUNT(cout) AS counts
FROM
spl_2016.outraw
WHERE
(( '%new jim crow%')
OR '%black lives matter%'
OR '%how to be an antiracist%'
OR '%white fragility%'
OR '%the end of policing%'
OR '%so you want to talk about race%'
OR '%police brutality%'
OR '%white supremacy%')
AND YEAR(cout) <= '2019'
GROUP BY years
ORDER BY years ASC

Query that takes a closer look into each month:

SELECT
YEAR(cout) AS years,
MONTH(cout) AS months,
COUNT(cout) AS counts
FROM
spl_2016.outraw
WHERE
(( LOWER(title) LIKE '%new jim crow%')
OR '%black lives matter%'
OR '%how to be an antiracist%'
OR '%white fragility%'
OR '%the end of policing%'
OR '%so you want to talk about race%'
OR '%police brutality%'
OR '%white supremacy%'
OR '%antiracism%')
AND YEAR(cout) >= '2018'
AND YEAR(cout) <= '2020'
GROUP BY years, mon

Result of query with counts of how many checked out book titles contained the inputted keywords each year:



Result of query that takes a closer look at the monthly check out rates for the given books:

Graphical analysis of the results of the query looking at yearly counts.



In the dates around police killings of black folkx that made national headlines, such as Eric Garner (2014), Michael Brown (2014), Tamir Rice (2014), Walter Scott (2015), Alton Sterling (2016), and Philando Castile (2016), there is no significant increase in checkouts of materials that are relevant to the issues that were discussed during those periods. When taking a closer look at the data, not included in this report, that is dated around the times of the deaths, there are some slight increases in the number of checkouts, but nothing that could be considered abnormal from the general rising interest.

In 2016, however, there is a abnormal rise as the number of increases rose from the average hundred to over two hundred checkouts. Looking at major events that occurred during this time, we can see the occurrence of the 2016 Presidential Election during which controversial candidate Donald Trump ran for office and issues regarding racism towards people of colors became a part of the mainstream conversation. Although it cannot be said to be directly correlated, there is reason to believe that the discussion of racism becoming a common talking point influenced the choices of materials people picked from the SPL, as reflected by the query above.

In depth analysis into results.

All datasets are credited to the Seattle Public Library.
PDF of full report.